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Almost All Jews in Nazi-held Russian Territory Killed by Germans During Occupation

April 6, 1945
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Almost all the Jews in Russian territory which was occupied by the germans were killed during the occupation, with the exception of 30,000 who succeded in escaping into the Soviet interior, it was disclosed today by Ilya Eherenburg, prominent Russian writer and war correspondent, in an interview published in the Bulgarian newspaper “Otechestvan Front,” official organ of the Fatherland Front.

“During my numerous trips to all the front lines,” Mr. Enerenburg is quoted as stating,” I was in a position to establish that of the 100,000 Jews who lived in Vilna prior to the German occupation, only 600 were living when the city was liberated by the Red Army; of the 70,000 Jews in Kiev, only twenty Jews were Left alive by the Germans; in Minsk only 1,000 Jews remained out of the 100,000 who were there when the Germans entered the city; in the city of Berditchev, which had a jewish population of 40,000 only twelve Jews were found when the Red Army returned.”

Mr. Eherenburg estimated that “almost all Jews of Cneohoslovakia have been annihilated” and that about 3,500,000 Jews have been massacred by the Germans in Poland, where, he added, only about 50,000 Jews remain. He said that “there are no Jews left in Germany, except a few thousand with false identity documents posing as non-Jews.”

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