Harrowing details of the looting, murder and rape perpetrated by the Nazis upon the Jewish population of the city of Borisov in occupied White Russia, which is on the road from Smolensk to the former borders of Poland, were reported here today by Eugene Kulik, who recently succeeded in fleeing the city.
“German military cars could be seen coursing through the streets of Borisov every day piled high with all sorts of wearing apparel and other articles seized from the ghetto into which all the Jewish inhabitants of the city had been herded,” Kulik stated. “The plundering of the ghetto was carried on systematically. The Nazis get drunk every night and them, armed with guns, broke into Jewish homes and stole the last few rags the Jews had and ravaged any young women they could find.
“One day, shortly before I succeeded in escaping from the city, the Nazis assigned several of the able-bodied Jews in the ghetto to dig several deep ditches near the local military airdrome. When the trenches had been dug, thousands of Jewish families-men, women, children-were taken there on trucks, stripped of all their clothing and ordered to lie down in the pits. When the ditches were completely filled, the Nazi soldiers turned machine guns on the Jews. Residents of nearby buildings fled their homes, unable to bear the sound of the shrieks and cries of the dying Jews. When time come to bury the victims, the Nazis did not differentiate between dead or wounded, All were buried, whether they breathed or not. Only those Jews who succeeded in reaching guerrilla bands escaped with their lives.”
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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.
