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Ghettos in Riga and Czernovitz; 150,000 Russian Jews Ordered to Forced Labor by Nazis

September 7, 1941
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The establishment of a ghetto for 30,000 Jews in Riga was reported here today, together with news from Rumania that the 30,000 Jews who remain in Czernovits will be isolated in a special ghetto there.

Simultaneously the Hosi newspapers which reached here today from Berlin report that 150,000 Jews in Soviet territory occupied by the German army are being forced by the German military authorities to work day and night on the rebuilding of the railway line between Vilno and Minsk. The German military is especially interested in completing in record time the change from the Russian gauge to the narrower German gauge in order to be able to make use of the railway line for transportation of troops and ammunition.

A Berlin radio broadcast today admitted the burning of the Great Synagogue in Bialystok. It denied, however, that the Nazis locked up 300 Jews in the synagogue before setting fire in it.

The ghetto for the Jews in Riga, the report here said, is situated in a Latgalian suburb on the right bank of the river Dvina. Of the 35,000 Jewish residents of Riga before the Nazi invasion only 5,000 retreated with the Russian army, the report estimates.

The establishment of a ghetto for the 30,000 Jews who remained in Czernovits was foreshadowed in an announcement today by Dr. Popovici, Mayor of that city. The announcement said that a delegation of Rumanian officials is proceeding to Nazi occupied Poland to study the organization of Jewish ghettos. The delegation will visit Lublin, Lodz, Cracow and other cities in Poland where the Nazis have established ghettos for the Jewish population.

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