Three Russians were sentenced to death and a fourth to 15 years at hard labor after being convicted of murdering 1,000 persons, including 800 Jews, during World War II, according to a dispatch received here today from the Soviet Union.
The men had committed their crimes in the town of Drissa, now renamed Werchne-Dwinsk, in the Vitebsk district of Byelorussia. During the German occupation of the town in 1942, they herded all of the town’s 800 Jews, plus 200 others they deemed as “progressive,” into an outdoor ghetto, Only a few of the persons in the ghetto had shelter, the remainder being left in the open during the cold winter. Finally, one morning all 1,000 were gathered in the town’s cemetery and murdered en masse.
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.
