The non-Jewish population in the sections of Russia which were occupied by the German Army helped thousands of Jews to escape from the Nazis, it was reported here today by a number of speakers addressing the third annual all-Jewish conference, which is being attended by delegates from all parts of the U.S.S.I and from the armed forces and partisan groups.
A Jewish partisan, A. Chazanov, whose wife and children were executed in occupied Byelorussia, told the conference how the Germans mercilessly massacred Jews in Byelorussian towns and how he and others were given shelter by local non-Jews and guided by them through the woods to Russian partisan units. He gave an eye-witness description of the brutality with which German units rounded up the Jews in each town and led them to the suburbs to be machine-gunned. He also reported on the activities of Jewish guerilla fighters and said that there are thousands of them in Byelorussian woods.
Shachne Epstein, leader of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, addressing the conference, pointed out that though many Jews were killed by the Germans during their occupation of Russian cities, “the enemy has not succeeded in annihilating the majority of the Jewish population because our government evacuated them far into the interior of the country.” The more territory the Red Army liberates, he said, “the more touching facts we learn concerning the self-sacrifice of Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Lithuanians and Moldavians, who at the risk of their own lives saved the Jews from extermination. Thousands of Jews, thanks to the assistance of the non-Jewish population managed to escape across the front lines or succeeded in joining the partisans behind the enemy’s lines.”
Rabbi Solomon Shiffer of Moscow, whose son was killed in action, devoted his address to an appeal to the Jews throughout the world. “The day of the enemy’s complete destruction is near, but the people of Israel will live forever,” he said, appealing to all Jews to unite in their efforts to bring about the defeat of the Germans.
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