New details of the savagery and ruthlessness with which the Nazi occupation forces have wiped out a large part of the Jewish population in the Baltic countries in White Russia and the Ukraine were released here today by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee on the basis of eye-witness accounts by Russians and Jews who succeeded in fleeing from the occupied territory and of Nazi soldiers captured on the battlefield, many of whom admitted that they had participated in the massacres.
In the city of Dvinsk, which had a Jewish population of about 50,000, thousands of Jews, many of them old men and women and children, were brought to a cleared space near the outskirts of the city. Here, the Nazis, following what has become almost a usual routine, ordered the Jews to dig large ditches and when they were dug machinegunned all those assembled at the execution place and buried them in the pits.
In Klinsti, in White Russia, the entire Jewish population was driven into cellars after all their valuables had been taken from them. After they had been confined for several days without food or water, the Nazis flung hand grenades into the cellars killing 2,600 people on the spot. The remainder of the Jewish population was forbidden to remove the bodies and as a result violent epidemics broke out in the town.
In the town of Korsun Jewish families were tortured to death in their homes and individual Jews were beaten up and shot in the streets when they were found by Nazi patrols. Similar accounts of atrocities committed upon the Jews in hundreds of other towns and villages, almost too numerous to list, are in the possession of the Committee, it was revealed today when the above details were released.
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.
