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
|
