Of the 3,000,000 Jews who resided in the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1939 there are today only 1,500,000 left, it was reported here today from Yugoslavia.
The report quoted the Yugoslav Review of International Affairs as stating that of 100 Soviet generals who have recently retired, or “died suddenly,” 63 were Jews. It claimed that 30 percent of the Jews in the Soviet Union are in concentration camps.
Pointing out that during the Nazi invasion of Poland many Jews fled to Russia, and that there were an additional 2,000,000 Jews in Soviet-annexed Polish territory in the early stage of the war, the Yugoslav organ says that even if the Nazis killed about 1,000,000 Jews during their occupation of Soviet territory, Moscow does not account for about 2,500,000 Jews.
The Yugoslav publication stresses that “not one of these missing Jews has moved to Israel because it was the U.S.S.R. that raised the greatest difficulties for Jews who wanted to emigrate.” It draws attention to the fact that during the past several years nothing is mentioned about the Jewish autonomous region of Biro-Bidjan, or of the Jewish colonies in the Ukraine and in Crimea.
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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.