State Department Condemns Slaughter of Jews

The United States Thursday joined other United Nations governments in condemning Germany’s “bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination” of the Jews and in pledging that those responsible “shall not escape retribution.”

In announcing the move, the State Department said reports from Europe indicated German authorities, passing beyond the stage of ordinary persecution, “are now carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.”

The announcement described Poland as “the principal Nazi slaughterhouse,” where ghettos established by the Germans now are being systematically emptied of all Jews except a few skilled workers valuable to the war industries. It added:

None of those taken away or ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labor camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass executions. The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in the many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children.

Source: U.S. State Department Joins In Condemning Slaughtering Of Jews, AP, (December 17, 1942).