50,000 Jewish War Refugees Reported in Kiev; Many Evacuated to Volga Region

Not less than 50,000 Jewish war refugees from towns in Soviet Ukraine devastated by the German air and land forces have fled to Kiev to seek shelter there, it was reported here today. The Soviet authorities are taking measures now to transport the refugees to the Volga region, primarily to the Samara and Kazan districts.

Reports reaching here from Germany reveal that many synagogues in Nazi-held Poland have been converted into field hospitals for German soldiers wounded on the Russian front. In Przemysl; the Nazi authorities converted the synagogue building into an electric station.

Fierce fighting is still reported around Rogatchev and Zhlobin, two cities in the Ukraine where the population is almost entirely Jewish. Both cities are said to be passing from hand to hand. The report states that the inhabitants of those two cities had been evacuated by the Soviet authorities into the interior several days before the German troops made their first entrance. There were 15,000 in Rogatchev, the city of the famous Rogatchever Gaon, who died several years ago in Latvia.

The Goniec Krakowski, Nazi newspaper published in Cracow in the Polish language, reports that the latest census of the population in Warsaw has been completed. There are today in Warsaw 1,355,328 people of whom 401,808 are Jews isolated in the ghetto. Nazi newspapers also report that more than 4,000 Jews have been arrested in Slovakia since the outbreak of the German-Russian war. The majority of them have been sent to do forced labor, the newspapers say.