SOVIET THRUSTS

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23805, 26 November 1942, Page 5

SOVIET THRUSTS

Enemy Taken By Surprise RAPID PROGRESS MADE (8.0. W.) RUGBY, Nov. 24. A clearer picture of the Russian offensive is now available, though there is still no certainty about details, owing to the paucity of information that can be safely released by the Soviet Command. Continuing their advance during the night, the Russians took more places north-west of Stalingrad, pursued the retreating enemy south of the city with tanks, and captured 17 pill-boxes in the factory area. In their north-western advance they took the enemy by surprise. At one place they killed about 1000 men. The capture of 24,000 prisoners so far is an especially promising aspect of the offensive, indicating that the Germans have been less capable than the Russians of enduring the physical and mental test of the three months’ arduous siege. The German position becomes more perilous as the Russians widen and deepen their thrusts on either side of the German salient stretching to Stalingrad. The two thrusts have apparently made about equal progress. Starting on a narrow front from Serafimovich, on the Don, above Kletskaya, the Russians advanced south-westwards about 50 miles to Chernyshevskaya. Thus they are about 110 miles due west of Stalingrad, 170 miles north-east of Rostov, and 30 miles north of the Kharkov-Stalingrad railway. The other pincer, starting from the steppe country about 55 miles south of Stalingrad, appears to have advanced about 50 miles to the north-westwards, crossing the Stalingrad-Kharkov railway just east of the Don bridge and taking Kalach. The distance between the two vanguards is thus about 60 to 70 miles froni east to west. At the same time, there can hardly be more than 40 miles between the Russians at Kalach and those who have been hammering at the strong German left flank immediately north-west of Stalingrad. , Future Prospects It is thought that the enemy may have begun some time ago to try to disengage his forces between the two rivers while maintaining a pretence of attacking Stalingrad. However, even if this is, so, there must be very large concentrations inside the Russian pincers. Hitler may avoid confessing total failure by keeping his troops in forward positions through the winter and supplying them through the narrow neck, as he did at Rzhev, but th|e risks would be very great, and. in any case, the Russian advance has not yet been stemmed on either wing. It is recalled that Hitler’s promise on September 30 to take Stalingrad was precise and unconditional. , Wider perspectives arq suggested by the fact that the Russians arc only 170 miles from Rostov, while the German invaders before Groznyi are 350 miles from Rostov. At the same time, it is recalled that the great movements planned last year against the whole German concentration before Moscow were not completely fulfilled, though the enemy only narrowly avoided a catastrophe. The hopes aroused in the Allies by the Russians’ new success are expressed by “The Times,” which states: *'-n the mounting Allied offensive which has begun to determine the course of the war in both hemispheres, the Russian armies are already taking a share worthy of their predominant part in the most recent phases of defence.”

EXTERMINATION OF JEWS

TREATMENT IN OCCUPIED COUNTRIES LONDON, Nov. 24. The Jews of Europe are no longer being persecuted, but systematically exterminated. , x The Geneva correspondent of the “Palestine -Post” states that the Jewish populations of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, which numbered more than 1,000,000 before the war, are being liquidated rapidly, as well as Jews from France, Holland, and Belgium. In fact, Jews everywhere, except in Italy, Sweden, Hungary, and Switzerland, are in the process of annihilation. Instances include the recent German machine-gunning of 24,000 Jewish men, women, and children who were taken from Riga hovels, stripped and mown down after being forced to dig their own graves. . . * The systematic extermination of Jews from Polish towns continues. Thousands of Jewish children and aged people were murdered wholesale last spring after Himmler, the Nazi Gestapo chief, had visited Warsaw. Twenty-seven thousand of the 30,000 Jews in Kielce were killed or disappeared during deportations. Fifteen hundred Jews w< re burned alive in a synagogue at Bialystok. Mass Slaughter in Poland Himmler has ordered the extermination of half the Jewish population of Poland to be completed by the end of 1942, according to information received by the Polish Government in London. The' Germans have mobilised special battalions, under the command of S.S. men, to carry out the plan. The victims are caught in the streets, taken to a cemetery and shot. Others are loaded into goods trucks at the rate of 150 to a truck which is normally intended for 40 people. Th ? floor of the truck is covered with a thin layer of lime splashed with water, and its doors are sealed. Trains are left on sidings for several days with people packed so tightly that some die of suffocation. These are left inside the truck, together with those who are slowly dying from the fumes of the lime, and lack of air, water, and food. Those still surviving are sent to special camps at Treblinka, Belizca, and Sobibor, where mass, slaughter takes place. By the end of September, 1942, the Polish Government states, 250,000 Jews had been eliminated under the guise of “resettlement in the east.” Quisling’s Finance Ministry has announced that the confiscation of Jewish property in Norway will be carried out by declaring all Jews bankrupt. The Stockholm correspondent of “The Times” states that Jewish firms will be wound up unless the position of non-Jewish employees is jeopardised, upon which trusted Quisling supporters will be made receivers. Jewish shops will be sold by public auction. Another 14 Czechs, aged between 21 and 25, have been executed “for helping Germany’s enemies and opposing the new order in Bohemia and Moravia.”

RUSSIAN TRIBUTE

ACHIEVEMENT OF BRITISH ARMS (8.0. W.) RUGBY, Nov. 24. The Soviet Prime Minister (M. Molotov), replying to friendly greetings from the British Foreign Secretary (Mr R. A. Eden) on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the U.S.S.R., expresses the hope that the comradely relations between the two pepoles will be devoted, after victory, to the task of re-establishing the peaceful life of the nations. M. Molotov adds: “The recent victory of British arms in the struggle against the common enemy strengthens still further the feeling of warlike comradeship uniting our peoples and brings nearer the day of a smashing blow against Hitlerite tyranny.” Moscow radio said the defeat of Marshal Rommel and the occupation of French North Africa had'upset Hitler’s plans and created an unexpected situation.