Stalin deportations - and the Big Flight from Barbarossa

Some data from some articles in the Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971

from Michael Palomino (2007)

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6. Estonia

from: Estonia; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol. 6

[since 19th century: Estonia is not within the Pale of Settlement]

from: Estonia; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, Vol.6

<Soviet Socialist Republic, bordering on the gulfs of Finland and Riga; independent republic from 1918 to 1940. Until 1918 part of Russia (Estland [Estonia?] and the northern part of Livland), the area of Estonia was not included in the Pale of Settlement. In 1897 some 4,000 Jews lived on this territory, including about 1,200 in *Tallinn (then Revel).> (col. 916)

[1940-1941: Sovietization and deportations]

<After the annexation of Estonia to the Soviet Union in 1940, the Jewish institutions were liquidated and the political and social organizations disbanded. On the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, some 500 communal leaders and affluent members of the congregation were arrested and deported to the Russian interior.> (col. 917)

[1941: The Big Flight from Barbarossa]

<Due to the efforts of the Soviet Army to halt the German advance on Leningrad the conquest of Estonia took about two months. Tallinn was not occupied until Sept. 3, 1941, and about 3,000 Estonian Jews succeeded in escaping to the Russian interior.> (col. 917)

[1941-1944: Extermination camps for German Jews in Estonia]

<All the Jews remaining in the zone of German occupation, numbering about 1,000, were murdered by the end of 1941. In 1942 and early 1943 about 3,000 Jews, mainly from Germany, were sent to the extermination camp in Kalevi Liiva. By May 1943 Heinrich *Himmler had ordered the cessation of mass shooting and the erection of forced labor camps. The main camp in Estonia was Vaivara, commanded by Hans Aumeier (sentenced and executed in 1947). About 20,000 Jewish prisoners, mainly from Vilna and Kaunas (Kovno), passed through its gates to labor camps at Klooga, Lagedi, Ereda, and others. The inmates were employed in mining slate, and building fortifications. The successful advance of the Soviet army led to the evacuation of the camps to Tallinn and from there to *Stutthof from where a "death march" of 10,000 took place along the Baltic coast, other camps were liquidated (2,400 killed at Klooga and 426 at Lagedi). On Sept. 22, 1944, Estonia was finally liberated. The Germans attempted to burn the bodies of their victims to conceal their crimes.> (col. 917)

[since 1944: Jews coming back to Estonia]

<After the war, Jews from all parts of Russia gathered in Estonia. The Jewish population numbered 5,436 in 1959 (0.5% of the total) of whom 1,350 (25%) declared Yiddish as their mother tongue, about 400 Estonian, and the remainder Russian; 3,714 Jews (1.3% of the total population) lived in Tallinn. As in the rest of the Soviet Union, there is no organized Jewish life in the Estonian S.S.R.> (col. 917)