This is the choice the German government gives to the conquered Pole, to the husband and father of a starving family; Leave your family or die or survive as the case may be. Leave your country which is destroyed, to work in Germany for its further destruction. If you are obstinate, we shall see that you surely starve.
Staying with his folk, he is doomed and they are not saved; the father and husband can do nothing for them, he only adds to their risk and suffering. Leaving them, he will be cut off from his family, they may never hear from him again nor he from them. Germany will set him to work that a German workman may be released to fight against his own land and people. He shall be lodged in barracks, behind barbed wire entanglements, under armed guard. He shall sleep on the bare ground with a single thin blanket. He shall be scantily fed and his earnings shall be taken from him to pay for his food.
That is the choice which the German government offers to a proud, sensitive, high-strung people. Death or slavery.
When a Pole gave me that proclamation, I was boiling. But I had to restrain myself. I was practically the only foreign civilian in the country and I wanted to get food to the people. That was what I was there for and I must not for any cause jeopardize the undertaking. I asked Governor General von Beseler, "Can this be true?" "Really, I cannot say," he replied. 