An inn-keeper is hanged on the door of his inn in Warsaw during

An inn-keeper is hanged on the door of his inn in Warsaw during

In Dombrowa, Szurley, Bendzin 'and Sosnowiec they are hanged publicly on gallows and trees; the public, even schoolchildren, being driven to look at these crimes.

During the last months the Gestapo have intensified the terror very severely. Their efforts are directed towards the tracking down and extermination ofallsigns ofPolish patriotic and freedom activities. Throughout the country, and particularly in Poznan and Warsaw, there is a ceaseless wave of political arrests, and hardly anybody arrested is being released ; most of those arrested are kept permanently in penal confinement under the Gestapo, in ordinary prisons and in concentration camps ; many of them, particularly in Western Poland and Pomerania, are executed by the Gestapo shortly after their arrest. The Gestapo men in Warsaw and Poznan are specially distinguished by their cruelties. The torture ofpersons under examination always aims at the extraction of personal information or concerning secret organizations, so that afterwards the Gestapo terror may the more easily seize upon fresh cases of patriotic activities and fresh people. The state ofthings in this sphere is so severe and threatening that all possible means should be taken to bring about an even partial relief and mitigation of the situation. News has been received of increased terror in Upper Silesia. There are gallows in eighteen Silesian towns. Those arrested are hanged.

In Dombrowa, Szurley, Bendzin 'and Sosnowiec they are hanged publicly on gallows and trees; the public, even schoolchildren, being driven to look at these crimes. In the concentration camp at Oświęcim itself the number of prisoners held has risen in the course ofthree months by 8,000. The mass arrests concern especially Polish officers of the reserve, Polish peasants who do not deliverthe quota ofagricultural produce demanded by the Germans, and Polish railwaymen and workers accused of sabotage in their work. A public execution of 100 Poles—of whom four were women—was carried out at Zgierz, a town near Lodz, on March 20th, in the presence of 7,000 people, for the killing of two Germans by a Pole on March 7th. The bodies were beaten with revolvers while still alive. This took place after the public announcement that 10 Poles had been shot for the killing of one German—and now the rate is 50 for one. On March 18th in the concentration camp of Dziesiata, near Lublin (where there were formerly i,i5oSoviet prisoners, ofwhom 950 were shot), 140 Polish political prisoners out of 800 imprisoned there were shot. Among them were a number of peasants imprisoned for delivering an insufficient agricultural quota. So we have 50 Poles shot at Zgierz, 100 in Warsaw, 105 in Jasnowiec, 400 near Lublin, and 540 near Radom, in each case for one German killed