Freight trains crowded with Jews deported from France, Holland and Belgium continue to reach the city of Jassy, Rumania, on route to Transnistria, the Axis-occupied part of the Ukraine administered by Rumanian authorities, it was reliably reported here today from Bucharest.
The trains arrive with many Jews dead from starvation as the result of travelling for several weeks without any food. The dead are removed from the cars when the trains reach Jassy, while the other victims are sent on to Transnistria. Upon reaching their destination, they are isolated in camps where, together with Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina, they are virtually condemned to a slow death because they are not in a position to secure any food.
Verified reports establish that more than 55,000 Jews who were expelled from various Rumanian provinces to Transnistria have died in the Mohilev district there. About 120,000 of the departed Jews are still alive in all of Transnistria, according to the Bucharest report. In the city of Mohilev, 7,000 Jews have been herded into a ghetto while 3,000 more Jews are held in a camp about ten kilometers from the city. The problem of securing food presents serious difficulties since they must pay four times as much as Rumanians for rationed foodstuffs and have neither money nor the slightest possibility of earning any.
RUMANIA PREPARES LIST OF 42,000 TRANSYLVANIAN JEWS FOR DEPORTATION
Rumanian authorities are now preparing lists of all the 42,000 Jews living in the Rumanian part of Transylvania, the Bucharest report states. Panic reigns among the Jews who are being registered since they are certain that the lists are being compiled as a prelude to deporting the entire Jewish population to Transnistria.
The report also confirms the fact that Jews from the city of Czernovitz are still being sent to Transnistria in large groups. It states that the deportations have provoked an unfavorable reaction among liberal Rumanians. Many of them have addressed letters to Premier Antonescu asking a more lenient policy towards the Jews, but their intervention is fruitless, the report indicates.
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