Two Jewish officers in the Red Army were raised to the rank of Major-General in a decree issued today by Premier Joseph Stalin. Nikolai Michelson, commander of an artillery division, and Michael Levin, attached to the Red Air Force, were the two officers promoted.
At the same time the Order of the Red Star, awarded for exceptional gallantry, was given to Lieut. Zelig Pinski, Col. Kogan and Capt. Schectman, all of the air force. The Soviet press today hails Pilot Schlome Foinman, who dived his disabled plane into a Gorman airdrome, destroying Nazi planes, soldiers and equipment, although he knew it meant certain death.
Other Jewish Red Army men, whose feats are recounted in the press today are Moishe Goldstein, a mine-thrower, credited with the killing of 250 Germans; Isaac Tolowker, from Minsk, who destroyed 112 Nazis in the fighting at Voronezh Sgt. Moishe Weiner, a sapper, who exploded a mine, blowing up many enemy officers and men; and Leib Fingerman, a tank-driver, who attacked heavily fortified enemy trenches at Velchov against overwhelming odds, and held off the Germans until Soviet infantry reinforcements could arrive. When the Nazis had been driven from their positions, the Red Army troops found the flame-scarred shell of Fingerman’s tank with the burned bodies of its crew inside.
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.
