The New York Times reported on June 10, 1945, about the
number of Jews killed by the Nazis. Since this is such an
early report, some of the information in this article was
later known to be inaccurate, but this is the first version of
what happened to the Jews of Europe under the Nazis.
80% OF REICH JEWS MURDERED BY NAZIS
All Those Left in Europe were Marked for Death by 1946,
AMG [Allied Military Government] Investigation Shows
Only 150,000 Survied
Extermination Plan Revealed - Russians Estimate Several
Million Died in East
FRANKFURT ON MAIN, Germany, June 8 (Delayed) (U.P.) -
The Nazis exterminated at least 80 percent of Germany's
Jews, and every remaining Jew in occupied Europe was
marked for murder before the summer of 1946, it was
revealed today.
It now is possible to give the full story of the Nazis' plan to
wipe out all of Europe's 12,000,000 Jews. Allied Military
Government authorities, after a painstaking study,
reported that a majority of the Jews in Germany met
death between 1939 and 1942. Russian officials estimate
several million Jews were exterminated at concentration
camps in Poland and White Russia during the German
occupation.
On the basis of this information, it is believed that less than
20 percent, or about 150,000 of the original group in the
Reich, survived the reign of terror. These survivors are
being returned to their homes as soon as possible.
Germans who dispossessed them are being ousted. In
most cases, this is done without serious friction, despite
the years of intensive anti-Semitic propaganda.
Synagogues Reopened
In several cities, including Aachen, Cologne, and Frankfort
on Main, synagogues have been reopened and Jewish
services conducted for the first time since November,
1938.
Some homeless Jews are cared for by the United Nations
Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Included are 500
Jewish children, mostly between the ages of 15 and 17,
but some as young as 10. They were rescued from the
Buchenwald camp and now are at Thionville in Lorraine, in
the French zone.
The Nazis' master plan was engineered by Dr. Alfred
Rosenberg, reportedly an Allied prisoner. He was aided by
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Gestapo Chief
Heinrich Himmler. The plan originally called for a "Jew-free
Reich" by April 1, 1942, as a birthday present to Adolf
Hitler, but it was slowed down by transportation difficulties.
Its first stage began after Poland fell in 1939. Jews were to
be used as slave laborers in war factories built in that
country. They were to die gradually of starvation, disease
and cold. The first contingent of Jews from Germany was
rounded up in Stettin, Cologne and Frankfort on Main -
about 50,000 in all. They were shipped to Lublin in October
and November, 1939. Transportation trouble set in and
only a few thousand were deported eastward during the
next two years.
Few left unmolested
The drive began in earnest in September, 1941. It
continued full blast until scarcely a Jew was left unmolested
in Germany or any occupied country. In Berlin the Nazis
began in 1941 to deport bout 20,000 persons eastward
each month. They were stripped, searched, robed and then
packed in trucks and rail cars. Some worked in airplane and
textile plants. Others were thrown into ghettos. Thousands
went straight to extermination camps.
Relatives and friends in the Reich seldom if ever heard of
them again. More than once the trains were stopped and
all Jews were ordered out and massacred.
The third stage of the program was launched early in 1943,
well after the original deadline for the whole plan. The Nazis
rounded up and deported Jews from France, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Some
were sent to Poland and others to concentration camps in
Germany. Tens of thousands were killed monthly in these
camps. The Nazis in 1943 began emptying the ghettos of
Warsaw, Riga, Lublin and other large cities, and started
systematic extermination by gas.
UNRRA officials expressed the belief that if the war had
lasted another year, the Nazis might have come very close
to their objective of wiping out all Jews in Europe.
Starvation Still Reported
The Vaad Hatzala Emergency Committee, with
headquarters at 32 Nassau Street, disclosed yesterday
that Jewish survivors of Nazi horror camps, freed but
temporarily residing there until they can be repatriated or
emigrated, "are living under conditions bordering upon
starvation." The committee said that it had received word
of the plight of the Jewish survivors from Isaac Sternbuch,
its representative in Switzerland, who made a cabled plea
for relief funds.
Mr. Sternbuch said all available food stocks purchased
abroad with Vaad Hatzala funds already had been
dispatched on International Red Cross trucks to
concentration camps at Landsberg, Dachau, Mauthausen
and Theresienstadt.
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