More than 100,000 Jewish colonists from the Crimea have been settled in Uzbekistan and in the Kuban district in Russia as a result of the Nazi occupation of their collective settlements, it was stated today by Professor I. Dobrushin, after whom one of the Crimean Jewish colonies is named.
Prof. Debrushin visited the Crimea while the Jewish colonists were preparing to evacuate, shortly before the approach of the enemy. “More than 100,000 Jewish peasants started in the direction of Middle Asia taking along with them all their cattle, seeds, horses and movable property,” he related today.
“The cattle was partly distributed on the way among Russian collective farms, since it was difficult to find fodder for them during the mass-exodus,” Prof. Dobrushin, who is a Jewish playwright and critic, continued. “Practically all evacuees reached Uzbekistan where they are now working in various collective settlements. A section of them have been settled in the Kuban region. A large number of them are in close contact with me and write that they are impatiently awaiting the moment when they will be able to return to their soil in the Crimea – ‘even to the ashes and ruins’ to which the Nazis may have reduced their homes.”
(Reports from Kuibyshev in April stated that several thousand Jewish colonists from the Crimea had settled in the Krasnoyarsk district in Siberia. A number of Jewish colonists from the Ukraine have settled near Kuibyshev.)
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