The first report of how thousands of Jewish families who were evacuated from the Ukraine and the Minsk district into the distant Soviet Republic of Bashkir have adjusted themselves to life and work there was brought here today by Abdul Achmetoff, Bashkirian Vice-Commissar for Agriculture.
“Masses of evacuated Jews are now engaged in helping the collective settlements throughout Bashkir,” Achmetoff told the correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “They are working in the field side-by-side with Bashkirs harvesting the crop. They are doing excellent work. The local Bashkirian population is very much impressed with the devotion which the Jews display in their work.”
The Soviet press, which features today a number of reports on the bravery of Jews in the Russian Army, singles out Sergeant Nahum Folinowski, disclosing that he has successfully carried out 688 important operations at the front during the present war. Folinowski has been at the front from the very first day of the Nazi attack. Another Jew whose courage and bravery is hailed in Pravda is C. Blaustein, a sanitary instructor who during recent battles carried 161 wounded Russian soldiers to safety under severe enemy fire.
PALESTINE CONFERENCE MUST SERVE AS EXAMPLE TO U.S. JEWS, RUSSIA URGES
An article stating that the conference of the League to Aid Russia which concluded this week in Palestine “must serve as an example of unity and self-sacrifice to the Jews of America and other countries in the historic drive to secure 1,000 tanks and 500 bombers as a Jewish lift to the Red Army in its life-and-death struggle for the existence of all people as well as for the existence of the Jewish people,” is published today in Einikeit, organ of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in Russia.
Under the title “To Live or to Die” the article points out that the fate of the Jews as a people is now being decided on the battlefields of Russia. “In this decisive moment the unity of the Jewish people and its solidarity with the USSR must grow still stronger. The Jewish people must show that they stand shoulder to shoulder with the leaders of the three great powers in their determination to destroy Hitler’s tyranny,” the article says.
A report issued today by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which is conducting the campaign for the 1,000 tanks and 500 bombers, states that about 4,000,000 roubles have already been collected in Russia for this purpose. The Jews of Biro-Bidjan alone have collected one million roubles. The campaign is meeting with wide response also in other sections of the country where large numbers of Jews are concentrated, the report declares.
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.
