The Russian Army, which is now close to the gates of Danzing, has liberated 2,000 Jewish women from a concentration camp near Torun in its drive to the Baltic port, it was announced today over the Lublin radio.
The women, deported by the Germans from various occupied countries to the camp in the Posen district, had been forced by the German military authorities to work at building fortifications. They are now resting in Lublin, the broadcast said, adding that Jewish organizations and the Polish Red Cross are supplying them with food and shelter.
The retreating Germans in East Prussia injected poison into Jewish prisoners at the Debreck concentration camp near the city of Albing, Ilya Ehrenbourg, Russia’s one war correspondent, reports. The atrocities were disclosed by a few women survivors who apparently had not been given a strong enough does. Ehrenbourg writes that these few women were the only Jews he encountered in East Prussia, although the roads are filled with liberated Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, South Africans, Czechs, Dutchmen and men of other countries who had been taken prisoner by the Germans.
A report on the revival of communal and religious life among the Jews presently in Vilna was given here today by Nison Anelik, a young clerk who survived the massacre of most of Vilna’s Jews, Nison, who arrived here this week, said that there are about 4,000 Jews in Vilna and that two synagogues are functioning there; the Bolshoi Synagogue on Nemetski Street and the Choral Synagogue on Zavalna Street. Both buildings were stripped of all valuables, but they are otherwise intact.
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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.
