Stalin deportations - and the Big Flight from Barbarossa

Some data from some articles in the Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971

from Michael Palomino (2007)

12. Russia: Caucasus

from: Caucasus; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol. 5

[1897-1921: 56,773 Jews in 1897 - Jewish structure in the Caucasus]

<The number of Jews in the Caucasus was recorded as 56,773 in 1897 (0.5% of the total population of the region), of whom 7,038 belonged to the Mountain Jews, 6,034 to the Georgian community (a figure apparently below th actual number, and 43,390 were "Ashkenazi" Jews, almost all of them originally from the Pale of Settlement (about 10% of these served in the army stationed along the Turkish and Persian borders); 93% of the "Ashkenazi" Jews declared Yiddish as their spoken language. During the 1917 Revolution and civil war (1918-21), the Jews in the Caucasus suffered with the other inhabitants of the region. Many of the Mountain Jews were compelled to abandon their villages and concentrate in the towns. During this period the Caucasus served as a transit route for the pioneers who left Russia for Erez Israel.> (col. 258)

[1921-1941: Jewish patriarchal structures in the border region]

After the (col. 258)

establishment of Soviet rule over the Caucasus in 1920-21, conditions for the Jews there were similar to those of the Jews in Russia; however, the government was compelled to take into consideration the special character of this frontier region, and attempted to avoid offending the national-religious feelings of its inhabitants, and the Jews also benefited from this policy. Thus the local Jews maintained their patriarchal society, their strong family ties, and their deep attachment to the national and religious tradition. Soviet ethnographers continued to study the lives and customs of the Caucasian Jews.> (col. 259)

[1941-1944: Flight from Barbarossa to the Caucasus]

[There come more Jews to the Jews who are already living there].

<During World War II the Germans only reached the northern extremity of the Caucasus and the number of Jewish communities annihilated in the Holocaust was thus relatively small. In those years the towns of the Caucasus served as a refuge for many Jews of Western Russia.> (col. 259)

1959: <In 1959, 125,000 Jews (approximately 1% of the total population) were recorded in the Caucasus (including those in the republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia, and the autonomous republics of Dagestan, Kabadrino-Balkar, North Ossetia, and Chechen-Ingush).> (col. 259)


Bibliography

-- J. J. Chorny: Sefer ha-Massa'ot (1884)
-- S. Anisimov: Kadmoniyyot Yehudei he-Harim (1894: Rus. orig. I. S. Anisimov: Kavkazskiye yevrei-gortsy, 1888)
-- A. Katz: Die Juden im Kaukasus (1894)
-- Bage: Les Juifs des montagnes et les Juifs géorgiens (1902)
-- R. Lowenthal; In: Jh, 14 (1952), 61-82;
-- D. Maggid; In: A. I. Braudo et al. (eds.): Istoriya yevreyskogo naroda, 12 (1921)
-- USSR Academy of Sciences, Institute of Ethnography: Narody Kavkaza, 1 (1960), 554-561
-- A. Eliav: Between Hammer and Sickle (1967), 189-230
-- M. Neishtat: Yehudei Gruzyah (1970)

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