Sarah Meisel, a twenty three year old Jewish girl, is hailed in today’s press as a hero who saved Russian army units from destruction by risking her life and maintaining telegraphic connections between the units under Nazi fire which demolished the railway station where she worked as a telegraph operator.
Enemy bombers suddenly appeared over the station “somewhere at the front” and dropped incendiary bombs. When the telegraph office started to blaze, the young Jewish girl, realizing that the line of communication would be broken if the telegraph apparatus was not saved, ignored the flames and succeeded in removing the heavy table with the telegraph instruments, pulling it, together with the attached wires, to a dugout near the tracks. There she continued to receive and transmit orders vital for defending the railroad line and for keeping the army units intact, until she received aid from military technicians.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
