Refugees arriving here today from Wilno said that more than 120,000 Jews have flocked to that city from Soviet-held areas of Poland and that thousands more are pouring in.
The influx rivals that of Jews from Nazi-held territory in Poland to areas controlled by the Soviet forces. Wilno, ancient capital of Lithuania and cultural center of Polish Jewry, has been ceded to Lithuania by Soviet Russia but will not formally be transferred until Oct.22.
Among the refugees pouring into Wilno are large numbers of Polish intellectuals and members of the middle classes. All accommodations in the city are overcrowded and most of the refugees are destitute and starving.
A number of prominent Jewish leaders were reported among those who had succeeded in reaching Wilno. They include former Senator Rafael Szerezewski, industrialist and philanthropist; Senator Rabbi Issac Rubenstein of Warsaw; Issac Giterman, director of the Warsaw office of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; I.M. Neumann, editor of the Warsaw Yiddish newspaper Haint; the Zionist-Revisionist leaders Spector and Szofman; Deputy Simon Zeidman of Warsaw, and a number of bankers and industrialists from Warsaw and Lodz.
The refugees reported that a number of Jewish Socialist and Peoples’ Party leaders and some Jewish physicians have been arrested and transported into Russia. In this group were reported to be Zalman Reizen, editor of the Wilno newspaper Tog and author of a Yiddish literary lexicon; Joseph Czernichow, an attorney, with his son; Anna Rosenthal and the bankers Lewin, Chwoles and Zaks.
The refugees said that there were no signs of anti-Semitism in Russo-Poland but added that the Jewish situation was grave because the Soviet authorities were confiscating property, machinery, materials and bank deposits. They said that community activities had been paralyzed and that Jewish organizations were no longer functioning.
Until Sept. 22 thousands of Jews had taken advantage of free communications between Russian and German areas in Poland to flee from Nazi persecution, mainly to Rovno, near the old Soviet border. Hundreds of these were said now to have joined the rush to Wilno.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
