Total Murder

Last week the American Jewish Congress asked the United Nations to do what could be done to save 5,000,000 Jews in Europe from extermination this year. Anyone who thought that the Congress exaggerated the danger had only to read Adolf Hitler's prophecy to Nazi Party members last week: "This struggle will end . . . with the extinction of Jewry in Europe."

Crowded Graves. In a report drawn from German broadcasts and newspapers, Nazi statements, smuggled accounts and the stories of survivors who have reached the free world, the Congress told what was happening in Poland, slaughterhouse of Europe's Jews.

By late 1942, the Congress reported, 2,000,000 had been massacred. Vernichtungskolonnen (extermination squads) rounded them up and killed them with machine guns, lethal gas, high-voltage electricity and hunger. Almost all were stripped before they died; their clothes were needed by the Nazis. A typical massacre: "In the town of Otwock two companies of German soldiers were dispatched from Warsaw with the assignment of slaughtering every Jewish man, woman and child. The massacre started at midnight and lasted eight hours. The dead were later collected and buried."

Empty Ghettos. The ghettos established by the Nazis in Poland and the Baltic States are ghost towns today, decimated by deportation and execution on the spot. "The Warsaw ghetto is empty. The streets crowded only a year ago with 500,000 Jews are silent now. . . . Last month gunfire was heard in Warsaw for several days. When it stopped, the Germans had finished their task. The last of the Jews were gone."

The Congress said that about 150 children managed to escape, roamed Warsaw's streets begging for food. An eyewitness described them:' "They look less human than little monsters; dirty, ragged, with eyes that will haunt me forever. They trust no one and expect only the worst from human beings. They slide along the walls of houses, looking about them in mortal fear."

Shall the Living Die? In all of German-occupied Europe, only Italy and Hungary had not carried anti-Semitism to the point of delivering up their Jews to the mass slaughter. But there were thousands of prospective victims in these countries. Today they might still be saved, and others too -- in Rumania and Bulgaria, possibly even in other occupied nations.

Saving any of them would be a monumental task; saving all was probably impossible. The most likely method, for which some plans had been made, was the exchange of Jews for war prisoners through neutral countries (Switzerland and Sweden have established colonies for Jewish refugees). It was a task which the United Nations could not in conscience ignore. Said the Congress :

"It is not enough to indict the murderer. It is time for America and the United Nations to act. Every hour sees the murder of more thousands. . . . All who will be allowed to perish will be an eternal badge of shame on the soul of mankind."

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