Jewish Refugees in Russia Return to Their Homes in Liberated Cities

Preparations for the return of Jews to their homes in the cities of Dubno and Kremenetz, which were recently liberated by the Russian armies in their drive toward the Carpathian mountains, are now being completed by the Soviet authorities in the Tambov region of central Russia where the Jews were given refuge when their cities were invaded, it was announced today by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee here. While in Tambov, the refugees became skilled agricultural workers.

At the same time it was reported by the Committee that not a single Jew was left alive by the Germans in Kremenetz and Dubno. These cities had large Jewish populations before the outbreak of the war.

“Many of the Jews in these two neighboring cities succeeded in fleeing to the mountains near Kremenetz where they organized themselves into guerilla units under the leadership of a Kremenetz Jew named Bernstein,” the report of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee said. “For almost a year they harassed the German armies and were of great help to the vanguard of the Russian Army. The German authorities offered a reward for any information leading to Bernstein’s capture, but all their efforts to discover his whereabouts failed.”

The committee also reported today that when the Russian Army liberated the town of Mozyr in Byelorussia, they found only three Jews. These were tailors whom the German authorities left alive in order that they might sew for the army. All the remaining Jews in Mozyr were annihilated by the Germans during their occupation. The Nazis retreated from the town in such disorder that they evidently forgot these last three Jews whom they had constantly been threatening with eventual execution.

Another report made public by the Committee reveals that women in the Red Army are performing the dangerous assignments of sappers, detecting thousands of mines concealed as “booby traps” in cities abandon by the Germans. One of these women, a Jewish girl named Raya Kozhevnikovn, 20, has left a trail of her activities in the word “demined” written on house walls in towns and villages throughout White Russia, the Committee says. She learned the hazardous art of detecting mines in Stalingrad, where she made 1,900 mines harmless.