The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was informed here today that virtually no Jews are to be seen in the Lublin area liberated by the Russian Army. “You can tell American and Canadian relatives who are seeking information about Jews who lived in or near Lublin, or have been evacuated to places in the Lublin area, that very few Jews are known to have remained alive in that region,” the JTA correspondent was told.
Vasili Grossman, noted Russian-Jewish writer, who returned today to Moscow from the liberated part of Poland, stated that he did not see a single Jew in the entire city of Lublin. The mass-murder of Jews in Lublin area has no parallel in world’s history, he declared.
“I have heard many groans and seen many tears in Poland, but no groans or tears of Jews,” Grossman reported. “There are no Jews in Poland. They have all been slaughtered, from senile old men down to newborn infants. Their corpses have been burned to ashes. In Lublin, a town with the largest Jewish population in Poland, where over 40,000 Jews once lived, I did not see a single Jew – man, woman or child.”
The Russian correspondent established that the Germans organized more than thirty “death houses” for Jews where tens of thousands of victims were gassed, and their bodies carried by conveyors to electric furnaces where they were burned. Some of the places where such “death houses” existed were identified by the correspondent. They include Ponary, near Vilna; Bolshoi-Trostinetz near Minsk; Belzhitsa near Rava-Russka, Novy-Dvor and Sabibur. The “death house” at Sabibur, near Lublin, was known as the burning place for Jews brought by the Germans in special trains from France, Holland, Germany, Belgium and Austria.
“The Sabibur death factory was removed to Chelm. The site where it stood was plowed up and planted to wheat, and the keenest investigator will be hard put to find any trace of this monstrous shambles. In Chelm, last year, malodorous smoke poured from the chimneys of the death factory. I was told this was oil smoke, which settled in the throat and made breathing difficult,” Grossman concluded.
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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.
