Not less than 800,000 civilians, including many thousands of Jews, have been killed during the first 17 days of Nazi-Soviet war, it was estimated here today by Axel Bergengren, correspondent of the Swedish newspaper Afton bladet, in a report which he wired from the German-Soviet front.
Accompanying the German General Staff, this correspondent describes how dozens of towns and villages have been completely wiped out by the fire of German and Soviet artillery. The Jewish-populated cities Pinsk and Baranovicz are entirely demolished, the correspondent reports. Tens of thousands of homeless victims fill the woods and the fields, including thousands of children who have lost their parents. They are without food and will not be able to find any shelter for many days to come.
The German and the Soviet armies, the correspondent continues, are not providing any aid to the unfortunate civilians. No medical aid is given even to the wounded.
The Moscow radio heard here last night reported that 500 women and children, majority of them Jewish, were executed in Lublin publicly by the Nazis in retaliation for alleged sabotage. The victims were, according to Moscow, rounded up in their homes and led to the Lublin public market where they were machine-gunned by German soldiers. Renewed mass-executions which resemble those of the early days of Nazi occupation are also reported from the Warsaw district.
Official German information which reached Stockholm today reveals that in addition to expelling all Jews from the territory on the left bank of the Vistula River in the Warsaw district, the Nazi authorities have also expelled the entire Jewish population from the Warsaw suburbs Zolyborsz, Mokotow, Czerniakow and Sielce.
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.
