Very few Jews have been left alive in Latvia, a captured Nazi lieutenant, Paul Mild Kraus, testified here today. He declared that not only were the majority of the 100,000 Latvian Jews executed “in accordance with the order of the Fueherer,” but thousands of Jews from Byelorussia, Lithuania, and Poland were also brought to Latvia and killed there in wholesale massacres.
The few Jews remaining in Latvia are not permitted to maintain any contact with the non-Jewish population, the Nazi prisoner stated. They must perform forced labor and are not allowed to use any means of transportation and are deprived of the right to buy medicine. Their bread ration is officially set at 75 grams a day, but they usually do not get even this meager ration and are literally starving to death.
The German officer, who was stationed in Latvia for a period of six months, admitted that “the city of Riga and its suburbs have been converted into a huge cemetery for tens of thousands of Jews, in addition to the many thousands that have been mowed down in a concentration camp near Riga.” Asked whether he had taken any part in the mass-executions, the Nazi prisoner replied: “All I know is that we conscientiously carried out the orders of the Fuehrer. We were preparing ground for the rule of the German Reich.”
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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.
