GERMANY: Problem in Subtraction

The arithmetic that Hitler has taught to Jews in the Third Reich has been the misery of subtraction. From all of them he has taken something: privileges, property, homes, life.

Simplest subtraction has been the decrease of the Reich's Jewish population by emigration, deportation and death.

Currently:

In Germany—500,000 Jews minus 310,000 equals 190,000.

In Austria—180,000 Jews minus 135,000 equals 45,000.

In Czecho-Slovakia—185,000 Jews minus 25,000 equals 160,000.

Within the last fortnight two sardine-packed trains left Vienna, as the Nazis applied themselves again to this problem.

Aboard each were more than 1,000 Jews bound for limbo—the new barbed-wire ghetto near Lublin in Poland. Elsewhere sealed trains crossed the border with more Jews (mostly very old and very young) for the starved concentration camps of unoccupied France. From Vienna alone the Nazis promised to dump five to twelve more trainloads a month. Hitler's final solution to his problem in subtraction is zero—to be reached, according to the most sanguine reports from Germany, in just six more weeks.