The majority of the 45,000 Jews of Czernowitz, capital of Bukovina, succeeded in leaving the city prior to its occupation by the Nazi army, it was reported here today. Most of them have been permitted by the Soviet authorities to evacuate into Soviet interior, especially into the Jewish collective farms of Southern Ukraine, the report stated. Prior to retreating from Czernowitz, the Soviet soldiers set the city afire.
German reports released here today described the shooting of hundreds of Jews in Minsk as “snipers”. They said that “Minsk is now a heap of smoking ruins”. German aviators returning from air-attacks to their bases report that huge tracts of land in the war zone represent now nothing but smoldering ruins. Numerous towns and villages are completely burned down, the population having fled with the retreating Russian armies.
The city of Vladimir-Volynsk, in the Polish Ukraine, where there was a large Jewish population, is now one heap of ashes. The city was in flames for three days and the entire population fled into the neighboring woods to seek shelter there from the bombs and the heavy tank fire.
Describing the occupation of Minsk, the Berlin radio heard here today stated that when the German troops advanced into the city they found nothing but “smoking ruins”. The Nazi radio confirmed the mass-shooting of Jews as “snipers” and said that the majority of the population of Minsk is scattered in the fields and in marshes.
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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.
