Soviet-jewish Hero Says Meeting Nazis Face to Face Made Him Jew-conscious

The hero of the day in today’s Soviet press is Samuel Liberman, a feeble-looking Jewish watchmaker with sad eyes, narrow shoulders, and a small chest who, despite being thrice wounded, returned to the fighting line on the Soviet-Nazi front and together with another soldier captured an important Nazi officer and soldiers who escorted him.

“I was never conscious of myself as a Jew until I came face to face with the Nazi officer whom we captured,” he said to your correspondent today in the hospital where he is laying with a head wound from the bullets which the German officer fired into his face because he had been forced to surrender to a Jew.

Accustomed to handling the most delicate mechanism, this frail Jewish watchmaker, after recuperating from his third wound, which he received in the present war, insisted that he be sent back to the front. One day last week he was sent on a reconnaissance mission together with a Russian soldier named Yippolitov. They knew that they were facing one of the Nazi S.S. elite regiments who carried out the massacres of Jews in Kiev and in Odossa. As they lay concealed along the road close to the German line, a military auto appeared. They fired. The car stopped and three Germans, an officer and two soldiers, jumped out. The fourth occupant of the car was killed.

USES RUSE TO TRAP NAZI SOLDIERS

Simulating different voices, the Jewish watchmaker shouted to the Nazis to surrender. The trick worked. The Nazis thought that they were surrounded by many Russian soldiers and raised their hands.

“Yippolitov and myself then walked out from our hiding place and began to disarm the prisoners,” Liberman related. “The two Nazi soldiers were still holding up their hands, but the Nazi officer, noticing that there were only two of us, leaped aside, drew his revolver and shouted. ‘You dirty Jew. You have deceived us. We’ll exterminate all of you. Where we come from, there are no more Jews left.’ He fired at-me and then immediately dropped his revolver and raised his hands.

“Kill this worm!” Yippolitov shouted at me, holding the other two at bay. My face was bleeding, but I decided to bring the Nazi officer to our military quarters for questioning, rather than to kill him. Yippolitov, in the meantime, bad tied the hands of the other two prisoners. Blood continued to course from my mouth and I feared that I was losing consciousness. The thought, however, that Yippolitov alone would not be able to deliver all three prisoners to headquarters kept me walking until we reached the first dressing station.”

The story of Lieberman’s, exploit is featured in the Soviet press today side by side with the news that Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov last night informed all friendly governments of the terrible atrocities which the Nazi troops are inflicting on a mass scale upon the population in occupied Soviet territory. Molotov’s note contained documentation supporting the charges, including German military orders, the names of the towns and data on the killing and plundering of innocent victims.