Indictment charge stewards and waiters with pocketing money paid for meals
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Woman learns son is safe and well from letter read at meeting of captives’ kin
By Joseph Williams
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Roosevelt may veto ‘freezing’ bill
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Delay in legislation until after war urged
New York (RNS) – (Nov. 25)
Protestant and Roman Catholic organizations are marshalling their forces for active opposition to wartime passage of any legislation to provide permanent peacetime military conscription in the United States.
It is expected that measures calling for compulsory military training of the nation’s youth will be considered when the new Congress convenes in January, and it is certain that the Christian churches will raise a united voice of protest at public hearings on the proposal.
Strong pronouncements urging postponement of action on the question while the country is at war have been issued by the Federal Council of Churches, and by the Roman Catholic hierarchy of the United States.
Careful study urged
Most of the opposition expressed in religious circles has requested that consideration of the matter be delayed in order that complete and careful study may be made before a decision is reached. Groups that have taken this stand include the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church in the USA, Northern Baptist Convention, United Lutheran Church, Disciples of Christ, and the National Commission on Christian Higher Education of the Association of American Colleges.
Several other groups have adopted vigorous statements against the principle of compulsory military training, including the Religious Society of Friends, the Church of the Brethren, the Evangelical and Reformed Church, the United Council of Church Women, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the National Council of Catholic Women, the Catholic Central Verein of America, and the National Catholic Women’s Union.
Pacifists in forefront
Most active in combating conscription legislation are the recognized pacifist organizations, five of which, it was recently announced. Have already sent staff members to Washington to lobby against such measures. Leading these forces is the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resister’s League, the National Council for the Prevention of War, and the International League for Peace and Freedom.
President Roosevelt recently issued a statement in which he called on Congress for early action on the proposal, and the War and Navy Departments, the American Legion, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars are also advocating its adoption.
Washington (UP) – (Nov. 25)
Rep. Joseph R. Bryson (D-SC) said today that he would redouble his efforts early in the 79th Congress for approval of a national wartime prohibition measure.
Mr. Bryson said it was too late to do any good in the present Congress which expires Jan. 3, but added “We will get an early running start in the next Congress.”
His bill calls for national prohibition for the duration of the war and six months afterward to reduce absenteeism and aid in the prosecution of the war.
Hazel Y. Lee
Detroit, Michigan (UP) – (Nov. 25)
Authorities at Romulus Army Air Base reported that Hazel Y. Lee, 31, American-born Chinese member of the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots, died today at Great Falls, Montana, of injuries suffered Thursday when a fighter plane she was ferrying crashed near the city.
She began flying in 1932, and spent six years in China as an employee of the Chinese Air Force. She enlisted in the WASPS in February 1943 and had been stationed at Romulus since August of that year.
Her husband, Maj. Yin Cheung Louie, is a flier with the Chinese Army.
Seabee visits child dying of leukemia
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Critical industries will get support
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McCormack cites higher living costs and maintenance of two residences
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Eighth Army breaks Faenza stalemate
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By Edward P. Morgan
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By Helen Kirkpatrick
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Senate group seeks full-dress study
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Doughboys wield bayonets, fight, and die, but the objective is obtained
By Henry T. Gorrell, United Press staff writer
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Raiders unopposed over Merseburg
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Hartford, Connecticut –
Receipts of $10,938 and expenditures of $10,901 were filed in the Secretary of State’s office today by the Clare Boothe Luce for Congress Committee.
Volunteer service at island bases will be for minimum of two years
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Peacetime draft backed by majority
By George Gallup, Director, American Institute of Public Opinion
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Early action in next session urged
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Victorious nations with debt entirely internal always recover, history shows
By Joseph H. Baird, North American Newspaper Alliance
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1,765,000 reported ‘exterminated’
Washington (UP) – (Nov. 25)
“Those remaining, about 3,000, were immediately gassed and burned in the usual manner.”
This line, varying only slightly, runs like a refrain through first-hand reports released tonight by the War Refugee Board of life and death inside the German “extermination camps” of Auschwitz and Birkenau.
The reports were written by two Slovakian Jews and a Polish major who escaped. They estimate that about 1,765,000 Jewish prisoners were gassed at Birkenau from April 1942 to April 1944.
Both camps are in southwestern Poland. Although Birkenau was the main slaughterhouse, Auschwitz produced its share of murders, too. Jews generally were gassed. Some were killed with injections of phenol in the heart. Non-Jews usually were shot.
Experimented with bodies
Theoretically, only the aged, weak and ill were murdered. Those able to work were permitted to work – until they became ill.
Jews from all over enslaved Europe were transported to the two extermination camps. The Polish major described a “hygiene institute” where German doctors performed biological experiments with “male and female prisoners, especially Jews.”
The major’s report said:
Here, sterilizing by X-ray treatment, artificial insemination of women, as well as experiments on blood transfusion were carried on.
‘Showers of death’
At first, those “selected” for death were taken to Birkenau and gassed and buried in a nearby forest. They were packed into rooms under the impression they were to be given shower baths en masse. The rooms then were sealed, and SS men threw hydrocyanic bombs through ventilation openings.
It soon became necessary, in order to kill efficiently, to construct special gassing chambers and crematoria. A new way of gassing was developed. The shower bath fiction was continued, with “selectees” jammed into the rooms naked and guards shooting off guns to frighten the doomed persons into huddling closer together. Then the doors were sealed.
‘Do not forget – Revenge’
The report continues:
Then there is a short pause, presumably to allow the room temperature to rise to a certain level, after which SS men with gas masks climb on the roof, open the traps, and shake down a preparation in powder form out of tin cans labeled “Cyklon – for use against vermin,” which is manufactured by a Hamburg concern.
After three minutes, everyone in the chamber is dead.
The ashes were used for fertilizer, it was said.
Whenever the trucks drew up before the infirmary, those summoned to get in them knew at once where they were going.
The Polish major reported:
Most of them were quiet and bid us farewell, but never forgot to remind us: “Do not forget – Revenge.”