Jewish Sergeant Who Lured Enemy Troops to Destruction Hailed by Soviet Press

A skillful maneuver by a Jewish sergeant attached to a Red Army artillery battery, which resulted in German bombers attacking their own troops, is recounted in the Soviet press today.

Senior Sergeant Michael Lifshitz, a former longshoreman from Novorossisk, was instructed to pick a squad to act as a rear guard, covering a temporary withdrawal of Russian troops from a strategic mountain in the Mozdok area. The Soviet intelligence had learned that the Nazi command, unable to take the mountain by infantry assaults, had decided to destroy everything upon it by bombing at noon the next day. The Russian troops were ordered to withdraw to positions nearby and Lifshitz and his men were left to hold the mountain until just before noon, in order to prevent a possible surprise attack by the Nazis.

At eleven o’clock in the morning on the next day – one hour before the expected Nazi bombing – Lifshitz opened fire on the German troops with a trench mortar, For a time there was no response from the enemy. Finally, the Nazis answered his fire. Advancing and retreating, in turn, in order to entice the Germans, Lifshitz, who had received a shell splinter in his shoulder, and his squad succeeded in drawing the Nazis up to the peak of the mountain. Then he and his squad retreated a good distance from the peak. A few minuted later the Nazi bombers arrived – right on schedule – and proceeded to destroy their own troops.