About a quarter of a million Hungarian Jews have been driven to the Ukraine for forced labor with the Hungarian and Nazi armies since the outbreak of the Russo-German war, it was revealed today by Soviet military authorities on the basis of information reaching them from captured prisoners and intelligence reports.
The majority of the Jews who were pressed into service at various sectors of the front were killed by the Hungarians and the Germans as soon as they had completed the tasks assigned to them, in accordance with orders from Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Gestapo, the prisoners disclosed. The Hungarian Jews were used to build roads, construct fortifications, lay mines and clear out Russian mines, the Soviet military authorities state. Frequently they were compelled to work at the most advanced sectors of the front directly under fire from Russian artillery. Last summer, during the Nazi advance to the Don, thousands of these Jewish prisoners were used to construct the German fortifications along the river bank.
In appearance the Jewish laborers look like anything but soldiers, the Russian military officials assort. They are unarmed and dressed in rags, One of the Jews, Laslo Gutman, who recently fled to the Russian lines, reported that he was drafted for forced labor in March, 1942 and assigned to a labor battalion. About a month ago his unit was attached to a Hungarian infantry regiment. The entire Jewish battalion, comprising about 330 men, was doomed to be executed as soon as its work on the roads and fortifications was finished, but Gutman escaped before the construction was completed.
Another Jew who escaped to Russian-held territory, Ferenc Hedvigi, a young electrical engineer, told the Russians that the laborers were governed not by military regulations but by prison rules. When his group arrived at Kursk military police searched all the Jews and confiscated all their money, food, soap, cigarettes and any articles of clothing they wanted, Hedvigi said. “We were not surprised at such treatment,” he added, “since we were accustomed to that sort of thing. The commander of the company, Lieut. Tot Szandor, instructed guards to ‘beat the Jews and make them work until they are dead. The fewer of them that return home the better.'”
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