About 200 Jewish officers and soldiers of the Red Army were executed by the Soviet authorities in a slave labor camp known as “Amour 3,” in Siberia, not far from Biro-Bidjan, it was reported here today in the Jewish Daily Forward. The mass executions took place on March 5, the day that Stalin died, and the following day, the paper said.
Declaring that the information came from “reliable sources,” the paper emphasized that for obvious reasons it was not in a position to reveal the sources, except to state that the report came “through Teheran from well-informed and trustworthy persons.”
The executed Jews were serving sentences of 20 or more years for activities considered anti-government, the report said. The reason for the execution could not be established, but it is believed that the prisoners were provoked into an uprising so the authorities could get rid of these “undesirable elements,” the report stated.
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.
