their labour force and craftsmanship potential remains unused (aside from
several workshops for tailoring, shoemaking, etc. which employ the total
of 8,000 Jews, the occupation authorities have failed to make economic use of
Jews in Warsaw). On the other hand, restrictions are introduced for the importation
of foodstuffs. Combined with absurdly small contingent rations, all
this causes an increase in prices and a spread of its inseparable companions:
hunger and disease.
According to the Hitlerite press, the epidemics result from Jews’ inherent
slovenliness and fondness for dirt. The Warsaw ghetto was established
under the pretext of protecting the population from epidemics. The official
data disprove similar nonsense. Until the establishment of the ghetto in
Warsaw, that is, until November 1940, there were almost no cases of typhus
among the Jews and their mortality rate differed little from pre-war levels. It
was the ghetto, the squeezing of the Jews into a small area, the pauperisation
and the unemployment that caused living conditions, which fell short of the
most elementary hygienic and sanitary standards and which gled tog874 a catastrophic
spread of typhus and tuberculosis as well as to an unprecedented
mortality rate. [14] To illustrate this, a table is provided to show the mortality
rate in Warsaw in 1941. At the same time it is emphasised that the situation
in the provinces does not differ much from that in Warsaw.
874 g-g Hersh Wasser’s handwritten annotation in the AAN copy.
