Four Jewish women who succeeded in escaping from the Nazis in Vitebsk today reported that of the 24,000 Jews who remained in that city after the Nazi occupation only eleven were left alive. The remainder were all massacred by the Nazis under the most brutal circumstances.
The eleven owe their lives to the fact that they were doctors and pharmacists whom the Nazis needed for medical work. Among them were the four women who reached Kuibyshev today after being led by guerrilla fighters from the Nazi rear to the Russian front lines.
The Soviet authorities were able to evacuate only 76,000 Jews from Vitebsk when the Nazi invasion started, the escaped Jewish women related About 24,000 Jews were thus forced to remain in the city. In the first week of the Nazi occupation only 200 Jews were executed. This was done under the pretext of reprisals for the activities of the Russian guerrilla fighters. The next week, however, 600 more were massacred, first being ordered by the Nazi soldiers to undress fully before being mowed down by machine guns.
The large-scale slaughtering of Jews in the thousands started several weeks later when more than 15,000 Vitebsk Jews were herded into the premises of a labor club and kept behind barbed wire without any food for several days. The misery of the Victims reached such a point that the Jews begged the Nazis to kill them in order to spare them the agony of dying from torture and hunger.
10,000 JEWS EXECUTED WITHIN FOUR DAYS, PEASANTS HELP JEWS ESCAPE
For several days the Nazis sent photographers to take pictures of the Jews, who were, in the meantime, dying of starvation. At the same time they removed hundreds of Jews every day and executed them. In this way they killed 5,000 of the interned Jews in the course of a few days. The other 10,000 were transported to a suburb where they were massacred in the course of four days. Their naked bodies were thrown into a mass-grave prepared by the victims. The building of the Vitebsk club where the Jews were held prisoners before being executed was set afire by the Nazis in order to make certain that anyone who might have hidden there would not remain alive.
Originally, the Nazis intended to also kill the few Jewish doctors and druggists, but at the last minute they changed their minds and ordered the eleven of them to don yellow Mogen David badges and to work in a dispensary. One day a peasant woman came to the dispensary with a prescription. The “prescription” turned out to be a note from a Russian doctor who was one of the guerrilla fighters harassing the rear of the Nazi armies. The note instructed the Jewish medical workers to appear at an appointed place from where the guerrillas led them through seventy kilometers of forests to the front line of the Russian army.
The four Jewish women doctors who reached Kuibyshev are Sara Swerdlowa, Chajah Palman, Sofia Kosurkina and Adela Notkin. The other seven are now at the front giving medical aid to wounded Russian soldiers.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
