The massacre in the Spring of this year of 715 Jews, in the White Russian town of Urechi, was revealed here today from entries in a diary found on a dead German non-commissioned officer.
The dead Nazi, Sgt. Erich Funk, wrote under the dateline “Slutsk, May 11,”the following “In Urechi on Saturday we shot 715 Jews and on Monday, that’s today, another 40 here. The young Jewish girls pleaded: ‘Don’t us, wo want to live.’ Many of them did not wait to be shot but jumped into the pit in front of them and were buried alive.”
In a later entry, dated June 13, 1942, the Nazi non-com, who evidently was still stationed in Slutzk, wrote: “Jewish men and women work in the town are driven in the evening to penal labor yards where they work from seven o’clock until midnight. They often receive severe floggings and their hands are covered with bleeding wounds.
The Soviet press today points out that these executions took place several months after the Nazis had entered the town and after the initial massacre of a good part of the town’s population, a large number of whom were Jewish.
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.
