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Barred by Soviet, 280 Released War Prisoners Executed by Nazis, London Hears

May 3, 1940
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A report reaching the Jewish Times from Trieste describe today the wholesale execution by the Nazis of 280 Jewish war prisoners near the township of Bialo-Polona along the Russo-German border of occupied Poland.

Last March, the dispatch states, 1,100 released Jewish war prisoners arrived in Poland from Nazi concentration camps. Of this group, 283 who were born in Russian-occupied territory were brought to the Russian frontier. Soviet guards, however, refused to admit them, saying they had been instructed to let only mixed and not purely Jewish groups pass.

The Nazi Commissar of nearby Lublin refused to admit the war prisoners, asserting that the city was overcrowded. Thereupon, the commander of the transport ordered the Jewish soldiers to dig a mass grave near a forest and ordered the entire group machine-gunned. Only three members of the group escaped.

Afterwards, the rabbi and community leaders of the nearby town of Wlodwa were forced to sign a document stating that the soldiers had frozen to death while on the way to the Soviet frontier.

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