White Russia Again Growing Into Jewish Population CentersJewish Engineer Leads Construction of Machine-Tool IndustryBy V. LEIBOVSpecial to the Independent Jewish Press Service
MINSK—Vitebsk and Gomel, in Gomel, in Bello-Russia, are rapidly becoming large population centers of White Russia's restored Jewry. Many Vitebsk Jews, with industrial skills, evacuated at the beginning of the war, are now returning to help in the reconstruction of industry. Engineer Feldman, who headed the first crew of workers which returned to Vitebsk in the wake of the Red Army five months ago, is one of the major reconstruction planners. His aides include Zalman Schechmeister, a topnocch moulder, and Reuben Katzeneison, champion assembly worker who tripled their quota in pre-war work and have been cited among leading Soviet industrial laborers. Homes for workers, polyclinics and vocational schools are rapidly coming up in the entire area. Equipment in large quantities, is unloaded daily in Minsk, Vitebsk and Gomel. Before the war hundreds of Bello-Russian Jews were employed at two big machine tool plants in Vitebsk. July 1941, when the Germans approached Vitebsk, the factory equipment was evacuated to the Eastern region, as were also also the workers, foremen and engineers. Five months after the return of the workers several hundred square feet of factory space were rebuilt.
The Jewish Criterion (Pittsburgh), December 29, 1944, p.18.
On the same page is reported:"It was Dr. (Abraham) Silberschein who sent to the U. S. the first report of the mass extermination of Jews in Poland's death camps. Known as a man who sticks to facts and is prone to understatements,"This is the same Swiss Zionist Abraham Silberschein of the World Jewish Congress who published in his 1944 book Die Judenausrottung in Polen (quoted in Mattogno & Graf's Majdanek) an eyewitness account from a survivor of Majdanek who claimed that before the end of 1943 two million Jews had been killed at the camp:"The old and sick were also dispatched right away-to the barrack that contained the furnaces. In the first room they were instructed to undress; in the second, they died of asphyxiation within two minutes. From the second room they were transported to the furnaces. There was a fire under the ground; the furnace itself did not burn, but it collected hot air of 2,000°. The dead bodies were thrown in, and the enormous heat dried them out completely. In this way, each was reduced to just a few bubbles that were so dry they crackled. ... This was the fate of the Central European Jews. Some two million of them went through the camp to their deaths."The Majdanek museum currently claims that 60,000 Jews were killed at Majdanek.
