Hundreds of Ragged, Homeless Jewish Children Roam Streets of Mohilev in Transnistria

Hundreds of Jewish children deported with their parents to the city of Mohilev in Transnistria, the Rumanian-held section of the Soviet Ukraine, are roaming the streets of that city, starving and ragged, according to authenticated reports received here today.

These children are the overflow that cannot be handled in the three orphan asylums which the Jewish community has set up, and which accommodate 900 youngsters ranging in age from two to sixteen years. In these asylums an average of six children are forced to sleep in one bed, the reports state. The presence of so many orphaned children in Mohilev is explained by the fact that the mortality among the deportees is fantastically high as a result of disease and malnutrition.

At present, the Jewish population of Mohilev is about 15,000, of whom 3,000 are natives of the city and the others deportees from Rumania, Germany and Bulgaria. These figures vary from day to day, one report points out, since new groups of deportees are constantly arriving and others are sent farther eastward to construct fortifications on the Russian front under the supervision of Nazi officers.

The Jews in Mohilev have succeeded in establishing some sort of communal organization under leadership of an engineer names Jagendorf, the report adds. They have a small hospital for contagious diseases which can take care suffering from typhus. Efforts on the part of the director, a Dr. Druckman, to secure sufficient medical and food supplies have been unsuccessful. The only communal kitchen in the city, which had been feeding 800 persons daily, has been forced to close down because it could secure no more food. Able-bodied Jews who are not taken by they produce goods by the Rumanian Army.

A similar situation, on a smaller scale, exists in the neighboring town of Krasna, the report reveals. About 1,000 Jews are confined in a ghetto, of whom 300 are residents of the city. Another 100 were deported there from the city of Dorchei in Bukovina, and the other Jews came from different Bukovinian townships. In Kransa, eight to fifteen people are forced to share one room in the ruined buildings assigned to the Jews. There is no orphan asylum to care for the Jewish children and only one hospital, with fourteen beds and one physician.