Several thousand Jews are among the 21,000 interness liberated by the advancing American troops from the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp, the correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency found upon his arrival here today. The Nazis tried to transfer Jews from the camp prior to their retreat. Among those whom they succeeded in removing, on April 8, was Leon Blum, former Premier of France.
The JTA correspondent spoke to some of the Jewish inmates and was shown the “barracks book.” There were page after page of names, with a red cross after a name indicating that the prisoner had died. At least half of the names marked with the red cross were Jewish. According to the records, 3,000 died in the camp in January, 5,400 in February and 5,600 in March.
In one barrack Jews were found who were used by the Nazis as guinea-pigs in experiments with a typhus vaccine. The Gestapo forced several Jewish professors to work in these laboratories, including Prof. Mark Klein, histologist of the University of Strassbourg and a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation; Prof. Ludwig Fleck of the University of Lemberg; and Prof. Elic Weitz of Strassbourg University.
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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.
