Stalin deportations - and the Big Flight from Barbarossa

Some data from some articles in the Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971

from Michael Palomino (2007)

11. Russia

from: Russia; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol. 14

[1939: Jewish flight from western Poland to Soviet parts - sovietizations in the new occupied parts]

<Refugees from western Poland in September 1939: 300,000> (col. 473)

<As a result of the annexations, the Jewish population of the Soviet Union totaled approximately 5,250,000. There were areas in the new territories which had a dense Jewish population - especially the cities - and Jews accounted for 5-10% of the total population. Most of these Jews spoke Yiddish and they were imbued with a high degree of national Jewish consciousness.> (col. 473)

<Deeply shocked by the swift capitulation of Poland and the fall of its Jews into Nazi hands, most Jews of the newly annexed territories welcomed the new Soviet regime, regarding it above all as providing assurance of their physical survival. They accepted the new economic and social order in spite of the great hardship that it caused them - confiscation of factories and businesses and the imposition of heavy taxes on shopkeepers and artisans. Jews were now able to enter government service, and found it possible to function in the Soviet economic system in cooperative and state-run workshops and commercial enterprises.

The Jewish communities themselves were disbanded and the status of religion and religious institutions - synagogues, yeshivot, and religious schools - underwent a sharp decline. The Hebrew-language schools had to adopt Yiddish as the medium of instruction and introduce the Soviet curriculum, with teachers from the old part of the U.S.S.R. put on their staff. Jewish youth organizations were either disbanded or went underground and many of the young people joined the Communist youth movement (Komsomol). The young Zionists and yeshivah students, for the most part, moved to Vilna, which was a Polish city and then became the capital of Lithuania, but was not occupied by the Soviets until June 1940, and from there many succeeded in reaching either Palestine of the United States. There was also a minor revival of Yiddish cultural life. [...] (col. 473)

This development soon met with the disapproval of the Soviet authorities, and by the end of 1940 there was no doubt that Jewish institutions in the new territories were also being systematically liquidated. This was especially true of Jewish schools, where teachers and parents were "persuaded" to replace Yiddish by Russian. A few attempts at protesting this policy were firmly suppressed, as for example, the arrest and later execution of the Soviet Yiddish writer Selik *Axelrod in Minsk. (col. 474)

[1940-1941: Stalin deportations]

Many of the refugees from western Poland were arrested in the early months of the Soviet occupation and deported to camps in the Soviet interior. In the spring of 1941 mass arrests took place among Jews and non-Jews alike, primarily former businessmen, industrialists, and religious functionaries, as well as socialists, Zionists and Bundists. They were sent into exile or labor camps in northern Russia, where many of them died; for others, deportation turned out to be the means of survival, while the families they had left behind soon became the victims of the Nazi slaughter. (col. 474)

[1939-1941: Break off of the ties to the West]

It was clear that Soviet policy was designed to equate the social and cultural standard of the new areas, as quickly as possible, with that of the rest of the country. Any remaining contact between Soviet Jewry and the Jewish world beyond the borders was broken off.

[1939-1941: Soviet media press is hiding the NS persecution in the NS part of Poland]

The Soviet press reported very little of the atrocities committed by its Nazi treaty partner, and made no mention at all of the persecution of the Jews. As a result, the Jews of the Soviet Union knew practically nothing of the fate of their brethren in the countries occupied by the Germans, and when the Soviet Union was invaded, they were mostly unprepared for what was to happen. (col. 474)

[1941: The Big Flight from Barbarossa]

GERMAN INVASION [with the collaborators]: 1941. In the first few weeks following June 22, 1941, the German invaders occupied most of the areas annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939 and 1940, including all of Belorussia and the greater part of the western Ukraine (as east Galicia had become). Vilna was taken on June 25, Minsk on June 28, Riga on July 1, Vitebsk and Zhitomir on July 9, and Kishinev on July 16. From most of the towns the Jews attempted to flee to the Soviet interior, but were prevented from doing so either by the advancing German troops or by Soviet security forces who did not permit the crossing of the pre-1939 borders of the U.S.S.R. [what concerns the arbitrary flight].

The Jews in the areas that were occupied by the Germans at a later date, such as Kiev (September 19) and Odessa (October 16), did in large measure succeed in escaping in time, either individually or within the organized evacuation of government employees, of functionaries of institutions, and of workers in factories. (col. 474)

In the more remote areas to be occupied by the Germans, the majority of the Jewish inhabitants also managed to get away in time.

The total Jewish population in the areas occupied by the Germans had been four million  (spring 1941). Of these, about three million were murdered. The rest were saved in a variety of ways including prior deportation and evacuation together with non-Jews; drafting into the Red Army [with high death rate not mentioned]; and flight to the forests and joining the partisan units [partly with high death rates not mentioned].> (col. 474)

[1941-1945: The Big Flight from Barbarossa: Jewish refugees in Siberia]

from: Siberia; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 14

<During World War II large numbers of Jewish refugees from the areas occupied by the Germans reached Siberia, and some of them remained there after the war ended.> (col. 1488)

[1941-1945: Death rate in Jewish partisan units]

<Estimates of the number of Jews who were active in the partisan movement range from 10,000 to 20,000. About one-third fell in the fighting with the Germans [and the collaborators]. When the areas in which they were active were liberated by the Soviet army, most of the Jewish partisans were drafted and joined the Soviet forces in their drive to Berlin. Eventually, a substantial number of these erstwhile partisans made their way to Palestine after the war.> (col. 478)

[The numbers seem to be very small. Murder of Jewish partisans by Polish Nazis is not mentioned].

[1941-1945: Death rate of Jews in the Red Army]

<About 500,000 Jews served in the Soviet army during the war, and approximately 200,000 fell in battle.> (col. 479)

[Benjamin Pinkus (in: The Soviet government and the Jews, p.23) indicates 2.5-3 mio. Jewish deads of 20 mio. deads in the Red Army as a total].

[1941-1945: Hiding identity in the Red Army]

<The tendency among Jewish soldiers to hide their true identity also existed in the Soviet army itself, because of anti-Semitic elements. [By this not many Jews were registrated in the Red Army, but there were many Jews in fact]. This situation facilitated the work of the anti-Semitic propagandists, especially in the rear, who argued that the Jews were not taking part in the war effort, and in the postwar years anti-Semitic groups continued to belittle the Jewish role in the defeat of Germany.> (col. 479)

[1942-1945: Special Red Army units with many Jews: Lithuanian division and Latvian national units]

<In the story of Jewish participation in the Soviet war effort, the Lithuanian division and Latvian units represent a special chapter. The Soviet government hat a special interest in creating national Lithuanian and Latvian units in order to demonstrate that these countries had become an integral part of the U.S.S.R. The Lithuanian division was created in the northern Volga region in (col. 479)

December 1941, but because the number of Lithuanians available was too small to fill its ranks, Russian-born Lithuanians and Lithuanian-born Russians were also drafted into the unit. But in its initial stage Jews comprised a majority in the division.

Jews also accounted for a large part of the Latvian national units. When the Lithuanian division finally reached Lithuanian soil, the proportion of Jews had been reduced to one-fifth. Four of the Jewish soldiers serving in this division were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. After the war a considerable number of former members of the Lithuanian division managed to reach Palestine.> (col. 480)

[to fight there?]

[1941-1945: Jews in the Soviet interior]

<POSITION OF JEWS BEHIND THE FRONT.

Jews living behind the front underwent great suffering during the war. In addition to sharing the general fate of the population, many of them suffered special hardship, for the number of refugees among them was disproportionately large, and they lived under severe conditions in the towns and kolkhozes beyond the Volga and in Soviet Central Asia. A few refugees were allowed to joint the Polish army under General Anders and were thus able to leave the Soviet Union [with high death rate]. The Soviet authorities were suspicious of the Jewish refugees, especially the former Polish citizens among them. Even those who had formally become Soviet citizens, were at the beginning, drafted into labor battalions only. A tragic example of this attitude was the execution by the Soviets of two former Polish Bund leaders, H. *Erlich and V. *Alter in December 1941.

Latent anti-Semitism among the Soviet masses manifested itself overtly throughout the war. Its principal victims were the Jewish refugees, whom the local population regarded as competitors for the scarce food and shelter available.

[1944-1945: Jews coming back cannot get their houses and positions back - anti-Semitic murders are going on]

When in 1943-44 the Soviet army liberated the occupied areas, not only was the holocaust of the Jewish communities revealed, but also the hatred of the Jews that the Nazis had successfully aroused and encouraged among the local population. This hatred was further intensified by the attempts of the few returning Jews to regain their houses and positions. In numerous instances Jews who had survived the war and tried to reestablish themselves in their old homes were murdered by their erstwhile neighbors. Liberated Kiev was the scene of a pogrom, in which a number of Jews lost their lives.> [...] (col. 480)

<The millions of Jews for whom Yiddish had (col. 480)

been their mother tongue - in the Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, and Bessarabia - were no longer alive. The majority of the surviving Jews spoke Russian. There were over two million of them, and the Soviet authorities sought to bring about their complete assimilation.> (col. 481)

[1945-1948: Further emigration of the Jews]

<With the close of the war Jews of Polish citizenship, including many previous inhabitants of territories annexed by the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1940, began to leave the Soviet Union. Groups of Soviet Jews, including Habad Hasidim, who had preserved their religious distinctiveness throughout the years of the Soviet regime, succeeded in leaving and large numbers of these emigrants found their way to Palestine.> (col. 481)

<Relations with Israel. SOVIET SUPPORT (1947). The first public announcement of Soviet support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine was made by Andrei Gromyko, deputy foreign minister and head of the Soviet delegation to the United Nations, on May 14, 1947, at the First Special Session of the General Assembly. He dwelt on the urgency of the Palestine problem, on the sufferings of the Jewish people during the war, and the hundreds of thousands of survivors who were wandering about in various countries of Europe.> (col. 493)

Teilen/share:

Facebook

Twitter

^