Hundreds of Thousands of Jews Decorated in Russia for Valor and Defense Work

The number of Jewish men and women decorated in Russia “for the valor and fearlessness with which they are fighting the enemy on the front and for the increased strength which they are giving to the defensive power of the country” runs into the hundreds of thousands, it is reported today in the current issue of Einikeit, official organ of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which is conducting a campaign to raise a fund for presenting 1,000 tanks and 500 bombers to the Russian army as a special Jewish gift.

“Their heroic exploits,” the paper writes,” crown with eternal glory our much suffering Jewish people. The entire country is proud of them, as it is proud of the heroes of all people in the USSR. They are proving that Hitter’s shouting that the Jewish people are cowards is nothing but vicious slander. They are the Bar Kochbas of our generation.”

The article reports that the Jewish colonies in the Crimea and in the Ukraine “have all been blotted out by the Nazis.” In every place where the Nazis succeed in seizing Jewish victims, they kill them without showing any mercy to children, women or aged, the writer states. At the same time the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee reports that many non-Jewish collective farms in Russia are contributing to the “1,000 tanks and 500 bombers fund” as an expression of their solidarity with the Jews.

David Schupak, who is chairman of the Jewish collective farm, Nei Leben, located near Kuibyshev, today issued an appeal “to all Jewish farmers in America, Canada, Argentina and Palestine,” urging them to contribute to the fund for the 1,000 tanks and 500 bombers. A similar appeal to Jewish doctors abroad has been issued by Prof. Boris Shimelovich, head of the Botkin Hospital in Moscow.