A monument is to be erected at Golubaya, in Stalingrad province, to an aged Jew who defied Nazi torture and refused to disclose where valuable electrical generating equipment and farm machinery had been hidden before the Russians were forced to retreat.
When the Nazis came to Golubaya they seized Joseph Weisman, a 62-year-old watchman at the local machine and tractor station and demanded that he tell them where the station’s dynamo had been hidden and also harrows, which they needed to disguise their gun emplacements from Soviet aerial reconnaisance. The Germans stripped Weisman naked and beat him with twigs, and when he still refused to give them any information, they gouged out both of his eyes with bayonets. Finally, they shot him.
Today the Golubaya station is again in operation, using the machinery which Weisman saved from the Nazis. The local Soviet authorities have voted to erect the monument on the exact spot where Weisman was killed.
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.
