Thousands of Jewish Reserves Being Trained in Biro-bidjan Await the Call to Battle

Thousands of Jewish workers in the Jewish autonomous region of Biro-Bidjan in the Far Eastern section of the Soviet Union are training feverishly awaiting the call to battle, according to information reaching here today.

Immediately after the normal day’s work is completed the Jewish workers gather at the training fields where experienced Red Army instructors drill them in the tactics of defensive and offensive warfare. Those tactics which have met with great success in fighting at the front are studied carefully and practiced by the trainees. They are being hardened to meet all eventualities that might be encountered when they arrive at the front. As one instructor put it, they are “being trained not only to be good soldiers but to perform heroic exploits.”

The terrain of Biro-Bidjan furnishes many advantages for the training of soldiers. There are vast expanses of level fields, hilly country, steep mountain trails and many rivers. Outside the limits of the capital city of Biro-Bidjan, itself, hundreds of young Jews can be seen drilling daily in the open ground and marshes along the Taiga river.

The double responsibility that faces the Jews of Biro-Bidjan – as citizens of a nation at war with Germans and as Jews upon whom the Nazis have visited their Post atrocities – was emphasized in an address delivered to the trainees by Col. Boris Heyman, one of the officers in command.