Yedinetz, once one of the most beautiful towns in Moldavia with a large pre-war Jewish population, has now no more than 130 Jews. The remainder have either been massacred by the Germans, or died in concentration camps.
The correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, upon his arrival here today, spoke with surviving Jews as well as with the non-Jewish population. They report that when the Germans entered the town they immediately issued an order for all Jews to appear at the military headquarters. There the Jews were registered and shipped away in trucks. German soldiers descended at the same time on their homes taking away everything they found in clothing and in utensils, leaving only the furniture.
At the end of the same day, the German military commandant called a meeting of the non-Jewish population and told them that everyone was free to take anything he wanted from the Jewish homes. He warned them that those refusing to participate in the loot of Jewish property would be considered as friends of Jews and dealt with accordingly. The non-Jews carried away from the Jewish homes tables, chairs, mirrors, leaving no furniture. After the Jewish houses were emptied, squads of German soldiers began to demolish under the pretext that they could be set afire by enemy bombs and thus constituted a danger to the entire population.
The 130 Jews who survived to return to their home town after the liberation of Yedinetz by the Russian Army are now homeless. Most of them were held in camps in Transnistria from where the Germans were forced to withdraw some time ago and where tens of thousands of Jews perished from hunger, torture and disease.
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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.
