The city of Kishinev, capital of Bessarabia, which had 65,000 Jews on June 21, 1941, the day the Germans launched their attack on the Soviet Union, now has 12, according to a report published here today. Of the remainder, 52,000 were evacuated into the interior before the German-Rumanian troops captured the city and the other 13,000 were murdered within one year after Kishinev’s seizure.
The destruction of the Kishinev Jews followed the usual Nazi pattern of crowded ghettos, mass executions, random shootings, deportations and torture. Even the dead were not left in peace. The Germans unearthed bodies in the Jewish cemetery in order to secure gold teeth and fillings. All the rabbis in the city were crowded into one house, together with their wives, and shot after having been stripped naked and tortured for 24 hours.
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