Many Kharkov Jews are believed to be working in coal mines in the interior of Germany, having been deported there early this year, it was disclosed today by Yudl Bukhalter, 49, a Jewish tailor from Odessa who is now in a military hospital here. Bukhalter, who served with a sapper battalion of the Red Army, was wounded when a land mine exploded.
He said that when the troops that liberated Kharkov from the Nazis in early February – and held it until the middle of March -entered the city they were told that shortly before the Nazis retreated many Jews classified as “economically useful” elements were driven from Kharkov to an “unknown destination,” which, it was understood, was the coal mining districts of Germany.
In Kharkov, Bukhalter learned, the Nazis had divided the Jews into three categories: “nutz Juden,” the “economically useful” persons, who were set to forced labor without rest or pay and with only one-third of a pound of bread as their daily ration; men and women who possessed no special training or skill utilizable by the Germans, who were crowded into huge buildings which were then blown up, and, finally, persons related to Red Army commanders, members of the Communist Party and members of the Young Communist Leage, who were summarily executed.
Some Kharkov Jews, he said, succeeded in escaping death or slavery through the connivance of peasants in neighboring villages. Furnished with documents indicating that they were of “Bulgarian origin,” they hid in the villages until they were freed by the Red Army.
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