1. Holocaust,
Rescue from
aus: Holocaust, Rescue from; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971,
vol. 8
<In the U.S.S.R.
The absolute number of Jewish survivors in the Soviet Union
was greater than that in any other (col.907)
European country (col. 908).
[since 17 Sep 1939:
Situation in Eastern Poland with 3-400,000 Jews from
western Poland - question of nationality - deportation
wave in June 1940 to isolated villages and concentration
camps]
On Sept. 17, 1939, when the Red Army entered eastern Poland,
there were in that region hundreds of Thousands of Jews who
had fled from the German occupation in western Poland, and
tens of thousands more were streaming in. The Soviets
maintained an open border until the end of October, when the
two-way traffic of Jews and non-Jews between the two
occupied sectors came to a halt. When this movement ended,
and only Nazi-persecuted Jews continued to pour into the
Soviet side, the Soviets closed their border and forced the
new refugees to return to the German sector, many of whom
perished between the lines. (col. 908)
The Jewish refugees from western Poland numbered about
300,000-400,000. They were ordered to choose between
accepting Soviet citizenship or returning to their previous
homes in the western sector, though the Soviets knew (but
the refugees did not) that the Germans categorically refused
to accept them. The refugees were not offered the
alternative of a temporary asylum in Soviet territory. Since
the Soviet authorities extended practically no assistance to
the homeless refugees, most, particularly those who left
close relatives behind, felt compelled to register for
return to their previous places of residence in
German-occupied territory. For this "demonstration of
disloyalty" the Soviets punished the refugees by deporting
them to the Soviet interior. Most of the refugees were
arrested in June 1940; families were sent to small, isolated
villages in the far north of the Soviet Union, and single
people were sent to prisons and concentration camps. (col.
908)
[since 1939: "Labor army"
for Jews from German occupied territories]
Jews who fled from the German-occupied territories annexed
to the Soviet Union in 1939-40 were accorded by the Soviets
the same harsh treatment given to western Ukrainians and
other residents of those areas who had collaborated with the
Nazis. Many of these Jews were were sent to the "labor
army", which was in fact a system of slave labor camps whose
inmates included criminals. (col. 910)
[since 1939: German and
Austrian Jews put into labour camps]
Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria were treated as
"enemy citizens" and sent to forced labour camps. (col. 910)
[31 Dec 1939: Brest Litovsk:
Stalin hands over German and Austrian Communists to
Hitler's Reich]
An event which typifies the Soviet policy of ignoring the
Nazi attitude toward the Jews occurred on Dec. 31, 1939, at
Brest Litovsk. In this city the Soviets handed over to the
Gestapo several hundred Communist activists from Germany and
Austria, both Jews and non-Jews, who had found refuge in the
U.S.S.R. before World War II. (col. 908)
[1941: Stalin's "scorched
earth" policy before Hitler's troops came in]
When Stalin announced the "scorched earth" policy and the
evacuation of administrative personnel, vital industries,
and their equipment and workers, Jews were more interested
in speedy evacuation than non-Jews. Jews did (col. 908)
exploit the few possibilities available for evacuation; the
authorities however, did not grant any priority to Jews.
Soviet Jews, i.e., residents and citizens of the U.S.S.R. in
its pre-September 1939 boundaries, could, on their own
initiative, try to escape eastward. However, along the
pre-1939 border in Belorussia, the Ukraine, and the Baltic
states patrols were set up to prevent refugees who were not
officially evacuated from escaping into the Soviet interior.
This blockade affected mainly Jews, because very few
non-Jews in these areas were eager to flee from the
advancing Germans. (col. 909)
The number of Jews moving eastward, either on their own
initiative or within the framework of the evacuation of
administrative personnel and vital industries, increased as
the German advance slowed down. (col. 909)
[June 1941: Stalin
deportation wave]
On the eve of the German-Soviet war (June 1941), thousands
of Jews, together with non-Jewish "bourgeois" and
"unreliable" elements from eastern Poland and the annexed
Baltic states and Romanian provinces, were deported too and
imprisoned in the Soviet far north and far east. As a result
many of the deportees escaped the later Nazi occupation of
their places of origin (1941-45). (col. 908)
[since June 1941: Blocked
Jews in arbitrary flight - Jews within the organized
flight from Barbarossa]
European country. For several years after the war rumors
spread, largely by Communist propaganda sources, claiming
that the Soviet government had made a special effort to
rescue Jews from the Nazis or to evacuate them from the
advancing German armies. These claims have been shown to be
unfounded. Those Jews who escaped Nazi extermination on
Soviet soil (including, until June 1941, Soviet-occupied
territories in eastern Poland, the Baltic states, north
Bukovina, and Bessarabia), did so
either by fleeing eastward from the advancing Germans, often
encountering Soviet guards who drove them back,
or after June 1941, by being evacuated into the Soviet
interior as Soviet administrative personnel or as skilled
workers. The Soviet authorities never accorded special help
to Jews in order that they might escape Nazi persecutions.
(col. 908)
[since June 1941: Help for
flight by Soviet partisan commanders - Jewish partisan
fighters]
Some Soviet partisan commanders (col. 909)
helped Jews escape; and in some cases partisan units,
particularly those with a considerable number of Jewish
fighters, attacked German-occupied townlets in order to
rescue their Jewish inhabitants. [...] (col. 910)
[since 12 Aug 1941: Release
of Polish citizens - Polish army forbidden for them - life
in poverty]
After the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, the Soviet
government, under an agreement with the Polish
government-in-exile, ordered (on Aug. 12, 1941) the release
of Polish citizens from camps and places of exile. Of those
released, the Jews were generally barred from joining the
newly formed Polish army, which later left the U.A.A.R. Many
Jews thereby suffered from lack of food and housing, in
spite of the welfare services extended by the Polish embassy
and its representatives in the Soviet provinces. (col. 908)
[since 1943: Jews from German
occupied territories put into Red Army units]
Jewish refugees from the Baltic areas and other countries
were conscripted into the Lithuanian and Latvian divisions,
the Czechoslovak brigade, and the Polish army established in
the U.S.S.R. in 1943 after Moscow severed relations with the
Polish government-in-exile in London. In many of these
military units, Jews constituted the majority of the
soldiers and suffered a high proportion of casualties. (col.
910)
[since 1943: Hungarian Jews
put into prisoner of war camps for Hungarian soldiers]
Because they had served on work teams of the pro-German
Hungarian army, although forcibly conscripted, Hungarian
Jews captured in 1943 on Soviet territory were treated as
"enemy prisoners" together with the routed Hungarian units.
The soviets accorded the Jews the same treatment as the
Hungarian soldiers even though the Jews were not considered
military personnel, wore civilian clothes, the yellow
armband, and had been maltreated by their Nazi and Hungarian
commandants. (col. 910)
[1945: Estimation: 50% of
the Jews could flee]
It is estimated that of the Jewish residents of the
German-occupied areas of the Russian Soviet Federated
Socialist Republic (RSFSR) about 50 % managed to flee from
the Germans. [...] (col. 909)
[1946: Fefer announces
1,500,000 Jews saved from NS troops 1940-1945]
The unreliability of Soviet censuses in regard to the number
of Jews in the U.S.S.R. makes it difficult to calculate the
number of Jews who managed to escape Nazi extermination on
Soviet soil. Figures of the number of Jews saved, published
in the West from Soviet sources (e.g., 1,500,000 mentioned
by Itzik *Fefer in the New York
Yiddish Morgen-Frayheyt, Oct. 21, 1946),
were probably greatly exaggerated. In spite of the official
Soviet attitude, a considerable number of Jews nevertheless
survived the Holocaust because they found themselves on
Soviet soil and somehow succeeded in evading the Germans
(see *Russia, the Soviet Union during World War II). [Y.
LI.] (col. 910)
[There is no figure for the Jewish deads in the Red Army,
only an indications saying "heavy losses". Estimations are
going from 200,000 to 2,000,000 Jewish deads in the Red Army
1941-1945].
Bibliography
-- A. D. Morse: While Six Million Died (1968)
-- A. Weissberg: Conspiracy of Silence (1952)
-- S. Kot: Conversations with the Kremlin and Dispatches
from Russia (1963)
-- U. S. Department of State, Publication 3023: Nazi-Soviet
Relations 1939-1942 (1948)
-- Polish Embassy in USSR: Report on the Relief Accorded to
Polish Citizens ... (1943)
-- N. Bentwich: Wanderer Between Two Worlds (1941)
-- P. Meyer et al.: Jews in the Soviet Satellites (1953)
-- R. Hilberg: Destruction of the European Jews (1961),
715-733
-- L. Yahil: Rescue of Danish Jewry (1969)
-- M. B. Weissmandel: Min ha-Mezar (1957)
-- Y. Bauer: From Diplomacy to Resistance (1970), passim
-- M. Kaganovich: Di Milkhome fun Yidishe Partizaner in
Mizrekh Eyrope (1956)
-- H. Smolia: Fun Minsker Geto (1946)
-- S. Kacherginsky: Tsvishn Hamer un Serp (1949)
-- E. Landau (ed.): Der Kastner Bericht ... (1961)
-- S. M. Schwerz: Yevrei v Sovetskam Soyuze, 1939-1965
(1966)> (col. 910)
Sources
|
Encyclopaedia Judaica: Holocaust, Rescue from,
vol. 8, col. 905-906
|
Encyclopaedia Judaica: Holocaust, Rescue from,
vol. 8, col. 907-908
|
Encyclopaedia Judaica: Holocaust, Rescue from,
vol. 8, col. 909-910
|
