A housing program to accommodate some of the thousands of Jewish refugees from the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Lithuania and Latvia who have been evacuated to Uzbekistan has been launched by the local authorities in Samarkand and other Uzbek cities, according to a report reaching here today.
The authorities are building apartment houses, laundries and bathhouses for the evacuees, the report states. A large house which will accommodate 265 persons has already been completed, and tenants have moved in, making it the first unit of the new project to go into use. Four other houses have also been completed and will shortly be ready for occupancy. Two large laundries have also been erected and more are planned. The report states that similar building activity is proceeding in other of the Middle Asiatic republics.
The local press today lauds the contributions which many evacuated Jews have made to the Russian war effort. It particularly cites an engineer, S. Mirkin, who is now employed in a large factory at Saratov, in the Volga region, who has evolved a new process which will speed up the production of armaments at the same time that it will save 26,000 tons of steel yearly; a mechanic, F. Pasternak, also working in a Saratov factory, who perfected certain production techniques leading to a great saying in electrical energy; and Zalman Shapiro, an evacuee from the Ukraine who has introduced new methods whereby locomotives can be operated with much less fuel.
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.
