240,000 Jews Executed by Gestapo in Ukraine, JDC Representative Reports

Two hundred and forty thousand Jews who had been deported from Germany and all parts of Central Europe to the German-held Ukraine were murdered by the Gestapo, according to the testimony of Hungarian soldiers returning from the eastern front, it was revealed here today by S. Bertrand Jacobson, American relief worker, who left Budapest with the American diplomatic mission on January 16th.

Mr. Jacobson, representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Eastern Europe for the past two years, quoted one Hungarian soldier as declaring that at one great tract of land, near Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, he saw the ground “move in waves.”The Germans, he said, had just conducted a mass execution of Jews and had buried their victims even before life left them.

EXTERMINATION OF HUNGARIAN AND YUGOSLAV JEWS DESCRIBED

In an interview here today, the American relief worker accused the Gestapo troops of having murdered fifty percent of the 18,000 Jews who had been rounded up by the Hungarian authorities in Carpatho-Russia and the Hungarian provinces and deported in cattle-cars to German-held Galicia.

Charging that the only policy the Germans have for solution of the Jewish question is extermination and destruction , the American relief worker declared that this policy was being pursued in every country the Nazis dominate.

The Jewish population of Yugoslavia, he declared, had been reduced from 68,000 before the invasion of the country to a maximum of 25,000 today. When the Nazis occupied Belgrade, he said, they took “terrible measures”of revenge against the patriots who had resisted them. Jews of the capital, he said, were rounded up and taken in trucks, a hundred at a time, to nearby forests where they were executed. Today, he reported, there are virtually no Jews left in Belgrade and only a few in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, where the Jewish question was put in the hands of the Italian-trained Ustachi.

Deportations from Vienna to Galicia and the Ukraine are still continuing, Jacobson reported, and there are now only 30,000 Jews left in Austria, most of them aged and infirm.

45,000 BUKOVINA JEWS DEPORTED TO GALICIA

The American relief worker told of the deportation from the province of Bukovina to Galicia and the Ukraine of from 45,000 to 50,000 Jews. The Rumanian government had accused them, he said, of having welcomed and aided the Russians in their occupation of the province. Further deportations, which took place last September and October, were halted only after courageous representations to the authorities by the president of the Bucharest Jewish community.

The Joint Distribution Committee did everything possible to aid the deportees, Mr. Jacobson declared. Wherever possible they were provided with food and clothing and subsidies were given to Polish committees to enable them to render aid.

Mr. Jacobson, Mr. Joseph C. Hyman, executive vice-chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee, and Mr. Morris C. Troper, chairman of the European executive council, described the Committee’s normal program of activities, which include relief of the distressed Jewish populations, maintenance of Jewish schools and medical services, and reported the measures taken to ensure their continued functioning through a network of local committees despite the fact that the war has severed connections with the Committee here. They pointed out that although the Committee has been unable to bring financial help to these territories, their programs are continuing with funds borrowed locally in the expectation that after the war the JDC will repay the obligations incurred.