As the Russian Army advances toward Rostov, the Nazi military authorities there have started mass-executions–by electricity – of Jews in the city, Major Krasotkin, a Russian commander, reported today.
The executions are carried out in one of the buildings on Engels Street, in Rostov, the Russian commander stated. Jewish families, including persons of all ages, are brought to this building where they are electrocuted, German war prisoners captured by Major Krasotkin’s troops reported.
On the Stalingrad front also Jews are being executed by the Nazis before they retreat. A list of twenty-one Jews massacred by the Nazis in the village of Jutkovo, on the Stalingrad front, before the village was recaptured by the Russian forces, was published here today. Similar executions of Jewish families have taken place in many other townships which the Nazis were compelled to evacuate.
JEWISH LAWYER DELIVERS ANTI-NAZI SPEECH, DEFYING GERMAN COMMANDER
The dramatic story of how a heroic Jewish lawyer in the town of Kupishak in Lithuania was shot dead, as, in defiance of a Nazi order, he pleaded with the Jewish population of the town to continue to resist the Germans, was told here today by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which received the information from the only Jew to escape the town alive.
This is his story as reported by the Committee: “Shortly after the Germans entered Kupishak they rounded up fifteen of the prominent citizens of the town, including a forty-year-old Jewish lawyer, Meyer Davidson. One morning a few weeks later the Nazi soldiers came to summon the entire population – Jews and non-Jews – to gather in an old Jewish synagogue. Most of the hundreds of people who assembled there were Jews, as Kupishak had a very large Jewish population. When they entered the synagogue they saw the fifteen hostages surrounded by Nazi guards. The Nazi commander then told the assemblage that several hundred meters of telegraph wire had been destroyed the previous evening and that unless the perpetrator of the sabotage surrendered the hostages would be shot. He gave the people ten minutes to decide.
“As the minutes sped by and the silence remained unbroken, the commander turned to Davidson and said: ‘You’ re a good lawyer and orator; speak to them and save your life.’ Whereupon, Davidson ascended to the pulpit of the synagogue and speaking with great difficulty, because most of his teeth had been broken by the Nazis, told his audience; ‘Brothers, the fate of all oppressed nations is always and everywhere bound up with the fate of the struggle for democracy and freedom. We will die, but our people shall live because freedom shall live. I don’t want to buy my life at the expense of treason…’ At this point a bullet from the commander’s gun cut short Davidson’s address and he dropped to the floor, dead.
The shot from the commander’s pistol was the signal for the soldiers to turn their machine guns on the crowd. When they had finished practically every one in the synagogue was dead. That night, after dark, I and three others who had only been wounded, slipped out of town and crept into the woods. My three companions died of hunger and loss of blood, but I managed to reach a guerrilla detachment.”
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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.
