Abstract
This article relates the experiences of Polish-Jewish children, born or raised in Germany, who survived the war in the Soviet hinterland, and validates that their traumatic wartime experiences had long-lasting consequences. Over the course of the years 1938 to 1945, as well as throughout the post-war decade, this group of children survived several fundamental, political transformations, which deeply affected and irrevocably changed their lives. These caesuras thrust them through a triad of transitions: as young deportees and refugees they ceased to be children; they were moved forcibly from one country to another; and the emotional pain and trauma they experienced during forced migrations. All of these children were refugees three or more times over: expelled from Germany to Poland, deported or sent to the interior of the Soviet Union, ‘repatriated’ from the USSR to Poland, they fled to Displaced Persons camps in Germany or Austria, and finally emigrated to Western countries. These extremely personal accounts of Polish-Jewish children experiences not only open a window into the past and help us to better understand the special plight of child victims and survivors, but they also allow us to reflect more deeply, thoughtfully, and comprehensively on the present-day issues of forced migration, displacement, and refugee crises.
In 1929, Rita Berger (née Adler) was born in Berlin, where she grew up with her two older brothers, Norbert and Fedor. Rita’s parents, Leo and Sabina, were Polish nationals who had moved to Germany during World War I. 2 The Adlers’ trajectory reflects the history of the Shoah in a transnational and multidimensional way. As Polish citizens and Jews, they were subjected to the horrors of World War II, first by the National Socialist regime and subsequently, under difficult conditions by the authorities in the Soviet Union. First, in 1938, they were deported by the German authorities to Poland and forced to make sense of their new circumstances. A few months later after the outbreak of war, Leo Adler was killed in a massacre at the hands of Germans. Following this trauma, the family was deported to Siberia and had to devise a plan to one day return to Poland. And they did—after 1945, they were ‘repatriated’ 3 to Poland, which had transformed into a Communist country. In these circumstances, the Adlers, like most of the refugees in this article, chose to leave Poland for good, shortly after their ‘repatriation’ from the USSR. Their temporary destination became the Displaced Persons camps (DP camps) in the American occupation zone of Germany, from where most finally emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia, or South America. The story of the three Adler siblings represents various forms of exile and reveals the complexity of Jewish survival: winding paths, painful farewells, constant exposure to political ruptures, and transformations. For the Adlers, it started with the Nazi regime and its atrocities, followed by difficult lives as refugees under Stalin’s rule and later during their emigrations.
The years 1918, 1938, 1945, and 1989 punctuate the life trajectories of the Adler siblings, as well as those of many other Polish-Jewish children who had been born or raised in Germany and who survived World War II in the Soviet Union. The year 1918—the end of World War I—was the first symbolic moment for this group and generation. At that time, their parents left the region of their origin, which soon after became the Second Polish Republic, and went to Germany. The year 1938 marked their expulsion from Germany back to Polish lands, as well as the sudden destruction of their home, their community, and a secure childhood. The year 1945 meant liberation from the atrocities of the war. Now the prematurely ‘adult’ children had to struggle for years to rebuild their new existence in the post-war order. Finally, the year 1989 with its political transformation following the collapse of the Soviet Union witnessed the opening of both previously sealed archives and previously sealed memories. This spurred many Jewish survivors to deal with their experiences in the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1946.
The Adler family members were among the approximately 230,000 Polish Jews who survived the Shoah in the Soviet Union. 4 Most had either fled from German-occupied Poland at the beginning of the war or, having been denounced as ‘class enemies and political undesirables’, 5 were arrested in Soviet-occupied Poland between 1939 and 1941 and then deported to the USSR. In other cases, some Polish-Jewish refugees moved further into Soviet territory as they fled from the eastward-advancing Wehrmacht. Some went to the Soviet Union individually, mostly to secure their subsistence. Whether they fled, were deported, or were evacuated, most of the Polish Jews who survived the Shoah and the horrors that followed the German invasion spent their wartime in the Soviet Union. 6 Although many of the survivors describe the deportation of their families to the Soviet Union as a stroke of good fortune, the experiences during their exile were harrowing.
This article relates the experiences of Polish-Jewish children who survived persecution and mass violence in Germany, then in German-occupied Poland. 7 My primary aim is to analyse their fate during their exile in the Soviet Union. I will describe the specificity of their experience, their responses to persecution, and the strategies they developed in order to survive. 8 Another set of questions includes the consequences of this protracted ‘life in transition’ marked by constant fear, the entailing changes in identity of those young people, and the impact of these changes on their post-war lives.
There is one common thread running through all the testimonial statements of Polish-Jewish children analysed in this article, namely, the idea of transition. Their experiences of transition have a three-fold dimension: political (lives affected by external decisions to displace them), cultural (most specifically, the change in language), and spatial (the movement of refugees between states). Beyond these three dimensions, I use the lens of transition to examine the difficult and challenging passage to adulthood, responsibility, and uncertainty. Exposure to unstable and unsafe environments; losing their homeland; witnessing or experiencing violence; and separation from, or death of, closest relatives resulted in deep trauma for refugee children. 9
This article draws on a broad spectrum of testimonies, recorded by the Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education at the University of Southern California, and by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. I also use written sources as well as official documentation from the Yad Vashem Archives, the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University, and the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum Archive in London.
This collection of documents and testimonial statements offer extraordinary information and valuable insight, which describe the expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany as well as the first weeks and months after the German invasion of Poland. The testimonial statements report on life in Germany, expulsion, life under German occupation, first contacts with the Soviet system, and refugeedom in the USSR. They also provide insight into the past while documenting emotions, feelings, thoughts, behaviour, and actions of the protagonists. These testimonies draw a broad picture of post-war life: the ‘repatriation’ from the Soviet Union to Poland, confrontation with the catastrophe of the Shoah, another escape to the DP camps in Germany, and their further emigration. It is exactly these historical layers which heighten the dramatic effect of the testimonial statements and allow us to better reconstruct and analyse the transition experience, trauma, and identity issues of the Polish-Jewish refugees.
Testimonies recorded many years after the events described as well as contemporary testimonies of Jewish children do present some methodological difficulties. It is important to be aware of the context in which the testimonies and reports were recorded, and carefully and accurately interpret facts such as names, dates, and locations. Joanna Michlic has proved through her extensive research on Jewish children experiences that ‘child survivors’ wartime biographies remain durable and almost intact in the child survivors’ memories despite the passage of time’. 10 Psychologist Henry Greenspan, during his many years of interviewing Holocaust survivors, came to similar conclusions and has demonstrated that the early and later testimonies do not differ from each other significantly. 11 To ensure thorough methodology, I have analysed a critical mass of testimonies and personal reports, checking them against other sources. Despite the cognitive and psychological limitations of these sources, they are the best window into children’s war experiences and transitions.
1. ‘The “Polenaktion” was the Beginning of it All’ 12
With the words cited above, Rita Berger-Adler began describing her war experiences. In 1938, the Polish government revoked Polish citizenship from Polish Jews who had lived outside the country for an extended period of time. It was feared that many Polish Jews living in Germany and Austria would want to return en masse to Poland to escape anti-Jewish measures. 13 In response, during the last weekend of October 1938, the German government forced approximately 17,000 Jews with Polish citizenship onto trains and transported them to the German–Polish border. 14 Out of the 17,000 deportees, more than half (over 9000) were taken to the town of Zbąszyń near the Polish–German border, where an internment camp was created. 15 Rita Berger-Adler’s long story of forced migration also started at this time.
It was a cold and rainy October when these unhoused, stateless people were left standing for hours at the border crossing. Sixteen-year-old Norbert Adler remembered, The police arrested me and my father [. . .] and then they put us on the train and shipped us to Poland. [. . .] Before the German-Polish border they stopped the train and pushed us over the border. We crossed the border and the Poles did not want to let us in. We were pushed back to the German side. When we came over three days later, the Red Cross came and took us to the refugee camp in Zbąszyń.
16
Fortunately, the situation began to stabilize at the beginning of 1939. The Polish side agreed to allow the deportees to enter the country gradually. 17 In order to be able to leave Zbąszyń, one needed to have relatives in Poland. Almost all of the personal accounts and memories of Polish-Jewish children who were expelled with their families from Germany to Poland, but who were raised with German language and culture, discuss their difficulties adapting to the new country, including the different East European religious practices of their Jewish relatives.
Such was the case of Joseph Rosenbaum, born in 1931 in Cologne, to Simon and Minna, both Polish citizens. Joseph’s mother Minna came from a Polish-Jewish family but was born in Cologne. Her husband Simon emigrated to Germany in 1915. Initially, they were deported from Germany to Zbąszyń in October 1938.
18
This is how Joseph described his first impression after arriving at his paternal grandparents’ house in Przeworsk (southeast Poland): My mother, me and my younger sister came to our grandparents’, whom I met for the first time in my life. My grandfather was an old man with a big, gray beard and my grandmother an old woman, with a headscarf. They looked like Hansel and Gretel, I was scared. We came to a village like in the 19th century, without a telephone, without cars on the street. Everything was totally different from what I knew and saw in Germany. I was sent into a little cheder
19
; there I was confronted with boys with payos.
20
[. . .] I received a schoolcap, and could not understand what they were talking about.
21
A similar situation was experienced by Max Wozniak, born in 1926 in Cologne. Max’s parents, Yitzhak Leib and Malka Mendel Wozniak, emigrated from Poland to Germany after World War I. In October 1938, Max’s father and two older brothers, Elias and Leon, were deported to Poland. In June 1939, Max, his mother, and brother Karl travelled to Zbąszyń to reunite with the family. Afterwards, the family landed in the Polish town of Łomża, north-east from Warsaw, where they found support within the local Jewish community. Max stated in an interview, ‘There I faced a language problem. All people spoke only Yiddish. Warm and good people, they took us and supported our family. I saw there Jewish people I never faced before, dressed like in Bnei Brak’. 22
Among the Polish-Jewish deportees, there were people who had been born in Germany or had resided there for many years. Youth and children were socialized especially in German culture and language. Growing up in Germany, many had lost a strong connection to religion and Jewish customs. Arriving in Poland, they came into contact with an Orthodox Jewish community, which included their own relatives. From now on, they had to find their way in a new social reality and culture in addition to learning a new language. As Joseph Rosenbaum and Max Wozniak testified, the confrontation with a completely new environment and relatives who were strangers to them was a difficult experience.
After their arrival in Poland, they faced other cultural codes and linguistic difficulties as well. Joseph, at that time a 9-year-old boy, was able to quickly learn how to navigate the new social reality and learn Yiddish, the common language of Polish Jews at that time. In contrast, Joseph’s mother Minna fell into a deep depression. She had never visited Poland before and therefore did not know the language as well as her parents-in-law, on whom the family was now dependent. Faced with a multitude of challenges in starting a life in a new country, parents often found their first source of support in their children, who were able to learn the Yiddish or Polish languages faster. In many cases, because of their quicker language adaptation, children proved to be mediators between them and their relatives as well as the local population. However, during the relatively short period of time of their Polish refuge, Polish-Jewish children faced various other barriers, social disadvantages, poor living conditions, and prejudicial treatment.
2. German occupation of Poland and escape to the East
Further tribulations for refugees began in the first days of September 1939, when many people decided to leave their homes to avoid the ruthlessness of the German Army. On 17 September 1939, the Red Army invaded the eastern territories of Poland. For many Jewish refugees, the Soviet invasion was actually a source of hope. Hundreds of thousands of desperate and terrified people fled towards the demarcation line between the German and Soviet armies. Among them were thousands of children who were made to witness the cruelty of Nazi persecution, murders, public executions, humiliation, intimidation, and robbery.
Accounts from Polish-Jewish children detailing the first weeks of the German occupation are moving records of the Wehrmacht’s cruelty. Jews were maltreated, beaten, publicly executed, and even burnt alive in the synagogues. The children’s testimonial style varied, but the details of the harrowing experiences are more or less the same. Even with the passage of time, both the testimonial statements of Rita Berger-Adler and Szloma Beglikter describe the situation in a similar way, even if the first was recorded in 1997, decades after the events described, and the second written down as early as in 1943.
In her testimony, Rita testified that her father Leo was among the first victims of the Germans. After being expelled to Poland and released from the refugee camp in Zbąszyń, the family moved in July 1939 to the Eastern Polish town of Dynów. The German Army took over the town on 15 September 1939. On the same day, an SS unit arrived and rounded up approximately 200 men and shot them in the forest. 23 Rita witnessed the arrest of her father Leo and other Jewish men from the town. One week later, all Jews were assembled in the main square of the town for registration with the German authorities. The Germans then put them on a ferry across the San River, and they were forced to land on the other side, which was Soviet-occupied territory. Rita and her brother were among those expelled across the river. 24
This expulsion of Jews from Eastern Polish towns and villages took place between September and October 1939, when the borders between the two countries were not yet finally delineated.
25
Some towns and villages changed hands twice, which intensified the suffering and the confusion of the Jewish population.
26
The 15-year-old Szloma Beglikter,
27
who lived with his mother and older sister in the same town as Rosenbaum’s family in Przeworsk, described his fate in the same way as Rita Berger-Adler. He opens his testimony with this sentence: ‘I was a refugee even before the war’.
28
What is remarkable is that his testimony was taken in 1943, after his evacuation from the Soviet Union via Iran to Palestine. Already at his young age, he was fully aware of the situation and his status as a refugee. Szloma had lived until 1938 with his family in Cologne. In October 1938, the Beglikter family was expelled as Polish citizens to Poland. They were forced to live in the refugee camp in Zbąszyń, where Szloma’s father died. In the summer of 1939, the Beglikters went to their relatives in Przeworsk. This is how Szloma described his experiences during the first days of German occupation: On 12 September 1939 the German Army had seized Przeworsk. Jews were caught to labour [and] beaten; they had their beards torn off with the skin. [. . .] The Germans set the synagogue and prayer house on fire; two Jews were burned there alive.
29
By the end of September 1939, the Germans expelled all Jews from the town, and then forced them to cross the San River. 30 Among the expellees were Szloma with his mother and sister. This journey describes how they reached the Soviet occupation zone, which was the same as the Adlers.
The anti-Jewish measures and atrocities of the German Army prompted many people to escape and find shelter in the Soviet-occupied territories on their own. Others, like the Adlers and Beglikters, were forced to cross the border. Ironically, for many Polish-Jewish children, this forced ‘escape’ saved their lives. At that time, there was essentially no other escape route for Polish Jews. The great majority of the refugees saw this flight as being the lesser of two evils, although many of them thought of it as only a temporary asylum. 31
3. ‘The deportation saved our lives . . . That was the situation’ 32
In September, the Soviets occupied slightly more than half of the territories of the pre-war Polish Republic. Before the war, approximately 40% of Polish Jews lived in this area. 33 However, between 1939 and 1940, 200,000 to 350,000 Jews from the Generalgouvernement and from the territories annexed to the Third Reich found shelter in the Soviet-occupied zone in their flight from the advancing German Army. 34
When the Red Army entered Eastern Poland, these people found themselves in a difficult situation. For the new authorities, they constituted a significant ‘technical’ difficulty, while the NKVD (Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del) saw them as ‘politically unpredictable’ and hence a potential security issue. Jewish refugees were among the first to experience the Soviet population transfer policy. In 1940, deemed enemies of the Soviet state, they were deported to distant parts of the Soviet Union.
Already at the beginning of the occupation, the Soviet authorities imposed drastic political and socioeconomic changes on the population of Eastern Poland. By the end of September 1939, the administration, schools, and institutions were fully Sovietised. This included expropriation of state-owned and private businesses and restricting the sale of their goods, all of which caused widespread unemployment. The experience of life under the Soviet occupation motivated many Jewish refugees to attempt returning home. As a result of registering to return home, the so-called bezentsy (refugees) became the majority of the Jewish deportees sent to Siberia. Between February 1940 and June 1941, the NKVD organized four mass deportations of Polish citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish, to the Soviet interior.
The largest group of Polish Jews, about 70,000 people, was deported in June 1940. 35 Among them were Polish-Jewish child refugees who had already gone through the hardship of their expulsion from Germany to Poland in October 1938. Many of them had experienced German ruthlessness and violence firsthand, or like Rita Berger-Adler and Szloma Beglikter, had lost family members. This group of refugees had already been robbed of their possessions, knew the ordeal of tragic flight, and had spent months in exile, uncertain of their own future. And now, after only a few months under the Soviet regime, they were further deported in disastrous conditions to the Soviet interior. 36
Polish Jews deported in June 1940 were placed in NKVD-supervised special settlements mostly located deep in the taiga known as specposyeloks. 37 These were previously used as labour camps. 38 Under forced labour, the people cleared forests; worked in various mines for lead, coal, gold, and platinum; and built roads and railroads. They suffered from disease, maltreatment, hunger, and exhaustion. Both adults and often children were forced to participate in these punishing acts of labour.
Ten-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum landed in one of the special settlements. After their expulsion from Germany, Joseph, together with his mother and sister, found shelter with their relatives in the Polish town of Przeworsk. After the German invasion in September 1939, Joseph’s family decided to flee to the Soviet-occupied town of Niemirów, from where they were deported to Altaisky Kray in June 1940: The people had to work in the forest. [. . .] We started to starve, because there wasn’t any food. My mother was very sick. [. . .] After she died, we buried her in the forest. [. . .] In the summer I collected mushrooms. There were also Polish kids. I spoke there only Yiddish, but they knew: this is the German, this is the Yekke
39
, they called me so. So I had to go by my own because the kids didn’t want me there.
40
These and similar testimonial statements show the new ways these children had to live and convey the suffering associated with the loss of their parents and close relatives. In addition to that, the Jewish exiles had to face ethnic tensions and pervasive anti-Semitism. The experience of exclusion from the community must have been more painful for children than for adults. Young deportees, who had spent their childhood and youth in Germany, were very often rejected not only by Polish deportees, but also by Polish Jews, because of their connection to German language and culture.
One of the first obstacles the newcomers faced in Siberia was again the language barrier. Because Polish and Russian are both Slavic languages, the Polish and Polish-Jewish deportees found it much easier to learn Russian, compared to the expelled and deported Jews from Germany. Often in the special settlements, both Jewish and Polish deportees reacted negatively to the Jews from Germany, and made sure they felt it. Even if Joseph was already able to communicate in Yiddish, he was stigmatized as ‘German’, viewed with suspicion as being a ‘stranger’, and expelled from the children’s community. Whatever their language skills, even within their short transitional time in Poland, child deportees like Joseph faced a completely new and challenging situation. As will be seen below, they were forced to adapt themselves to these circumstances very quickly, and most of them succeeded.
4. The long road to freedom
Shortly after the outbreak of the German–Soviet war, the signing of the Polish–Soviet agreement and the announcement of ‘amnesty’ for Polish citizens in August 1941 marked a turning point in the lives of most of the deportees. Polish Jews represented a large percentage of former exiles who rushed southward to the Central-Asian Soviet republics in hopes of finding better living conditions and food. 41 The biggest concentrations of Jewish refugees were formed near Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Dzhambul (present-day Taraz, Kazakhstan) and Jalal-Abad (Kyrgyzstan). 42 Unfortunately, hunger, poverty, typhus, and malaria led to an extremely high mortality rate in those communities. 43
After the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland in September 1939, the severing of diplomatic relations between Poland and the USSR followed. The diplomatic relations were restored after the outbreak of the German–Soviet war, and the signing of the Sikorski–Maisky agreement in 30 July 1941. The Polish Embassy in the USSR, which was at the time temporarily located in Kuybyshev (present-day Samara), was fortunately able to reopen. In this capacity and acting as a representative of the Polish government-in-exile based in London, it was able to create more than 400 welfare institutions through the Soviet Union to provide help for refugees. 44 A number of Jewish organizations, such as the JDC (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, JDC) and the Jewish Agency for Palestine, supported refugees by sending food and funds. 45 Under the umbrella of several embassies, including the Polish one, it was possible to allow Jewish organizations to begin charitable work in the USSR because at that stage of the war, Stalin was compelled to cooperate with the Allied Forces. 46
Institutions such as orphanages, homes for the disabled, kindergartens, schools, sleeping and feeding centres, and medical aid posts were opened as part of the assistance network.
47
Polish Jews as well as other Polish citizens in the USSR had already spent more than two years away from their normal lives. They were sick, famished, and without clothing or food. Children’s homes were accorded the highest priority by the relief work provided by the Polish embassy.
48
Between spring 1940 and autumn 1942, thousands of children had lost their parents, siblings, and grandparents. The 83 children’s homes established and supported by the Polish embassy became a life-saving refuge for the numerous orphans and half-orphans.
49
They saved many Polish-Jewish children from death, among them the 10-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum: After the amnesty was declared we went to Tashkent in Uzbekistan. In Tashkent, it was hard to get food even if one had money. We were completely exhausted. Shortly after we arrived there my younger sister died, then my grandmother died, and finally my aunt died, because of hunger, starvation and typhus. I was ten years old, and from that point alone in Russia. I had typhus and came into a hospital. Shortly afterwards I went on my own into a Polish orphanage, although I was still weak and sick.
50
From the testimonial statements, it is fair to conclude that the refugee children lost their childhoods very quickly. They ceased to be children because they were affected the most by the changes in family labour distribution and by the necessity to become completely independent. As Joseph’s testimony indicates, children adopted various strategies to survive. Even young children, like Joseph, took their lives into their own hands and acted independently of adults. After the deaths of his mother, sister, grandmother, and aunt, he stayed alive on his own and even resorted to play acting. The 10-year-old boy first entered the hospital because of typhus, but after recovering and being released, he took poison in order to be readmitted into the hospital. Joseph recognized that, ‘There I have had at least bed and food’. 51
Very soon he found out that there was a Polish orphanage, which is where he finally found refuge. 52 Joseph was acutely aware that this orphanage offered the best chance for survival during that very trying time. He was not the only one. There are testimonies describing children who ran away from parents in order to find shelter and better living conditions in Polish orphanages and kindergartens. 53 Many of them denied the fact that their parents or relatives were still alive in order to achieve their goal which was to find care and food in places of refuge for homeless children.
Unfortunately, the majority of child refugees were forced to become accustomed to daily exertion as well as struggling to stay alive and ensure the lives of the loved ones in their care. Situations where children had to assume breadwinner responsibilities were common. The death of one or both parents often contributed to their coming of age far earlier, as they had to take on duties which before had been reserved for the older generation. Losing one’s loved ones, people on whom the child depended for support, was a devastating emotional experience. As we have seen in Joseph Rosenbaum’s testimony, the ravages of war and life in exile, overtaxing labour, and the loss of parents and siblings meant for these children that their world was gradually falling apart.
Shortly after diplomatic relations between the Polish government-in-exile and the USSR were restored, Polish military units under General Władysław Anders started forming in the southern Soviet republics. In the spring of 1942, the informally named Anders’ Army, or the Polish Armed Forces, was evacuated from the Soviet Union to Palestine to assist the British fighting on the southern front. 54 Approximately 4000 Jewish soldiers and 1600 civilians left the USSR for Iran with the Polish Army. Among the evacuees were between 800 and 1000 children. 55 A Jewish orphanage was created in Tehran from the funds provided by such organizations as the Jewish Agency and JDC. 56 The children were in very bad physical condition. One of the members of the British medical commission offered the following comment after examining them: ‘Who have you sent us here? Children or dead people?’ 57 Most of these children had been forced to undergo a long, arduous, and painful journey across two continents. Some, like Joseph Rosenbaum and Szloma Beglikter, started in Germany and eventually went to Poland, Siberia, and then the Soviet republics in Asia, finally reaching Palestine in February 1943. 58
5. Return to the ‘lost homeland’—how to recreate life?
Except for the relatively small group of more than 800 Polish-Jewish children evacuated to Iran and then to Palestine, most refugee children had to stay in the USSR until the end of the war. The final decision regarding ‘repatriation’ was made on 6 July 1945. According to the agreement signed by the Soviet Union and the Provisional Polish Government of National Unity, the right of return was granted to all individuals who had held Polish citizenship on 17 September 1939 and were of Polish or Jewish nationality. From 1945 to 1949, more than 200,000 Jews returned from the USSR to Poland. 59 Most of the transports progressed to the former German territories that had been ceded to Poland, mostly in Lower Silesia and West Pomerania. 60
The majority of the Jewish repatriates from the Soviet Union had been strongly affected by the turmoil of the war. Their exile in Siberia and Central Asia had been characterized by hunger, illness, and poverty. Returning from the Soviet Union, they were exhausted and in poor health. In addition, they returned home full of curiosity but were also unsettled by the uncertainty and fears regarding the relatives and friends they had left behind when they went to the USSR. As soon as they arrived, they found out that relatives who had stayed behind had been murdered—their former homeland had become a Jewish cemetery. Because of the unimaginable scale of the tragedy, it was very difficult for them to grasp the reality of the Shoah. 61 The world they had left behind in 1939 no longer existed. There was nowhere they could return. They were not welcome in their former homes. The situation in war-ravaged Poland alarmed many. Starting at the Polish border, the returnees were often confronted with virulent anti-Semitism. 62
The experience of the war had done nothing to ameliorate the stereotypes and prejudices that had long been widespread in Polish society. 63 Most Poles showed neither empathy for nor solidarity with the returnees. 64 In summer 1945, anti-Jewish unrest and pogroms erupted in some Polish cities. 65 This atmosphere culminated in the July 1946 pogrom in Kielce, which killed an estimated 42 Polish Jews. 66 Facing the many unfortunate circumstances of this situation together with the loss of their community and relatives, most of the survivors were persuaded to move on and rebuild their lives elsewhere.
The Karliner family provides a good example of these sentiments. Judith Karliner was born in 1927 in Berlin to Polish-Jewish parents. In October 1938, Judith’s father was arrested and deported to Poland. In June 1939, Judith, together with her mother and sister, were able to leave Germany and join him in the refugee camp in Zbąszyń. Later in the same summer, they were allowed to leave the camp, and journeyed to their relatives in the town of Stanisławów in Eastern Poland (present-day Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine). When World War II began, the town was occupied by the Soviets. As the situation there became increasingly precarious, Judith’s father volunteered to go to the Soviet Union as a labourer. In January 1940, the Karliners, along with thousands of other Polish nationals, were transported to the Caucasus. From there, the family was transferred to Saratov (on the Volga).
In an interview, Judith Karliner-Gerczuk recalled these events as follows: Hitler had a very good teacher in Stalin. Because in Russia was exactly the same thing what we went through in Germany. [. . .] I want to let known the future generations what was going on. Because some people say, ‘Oh, you were not in a camp, so you didn’t go through so much’. But for me it was a trauma practically from childhood on.
67
Judith’s family, in contrast to Joseph Rosenbaum, Szloma Beglikter, and Rita Berger, was able to survive both the Shoah and the exile in the Soviet Union. But Judith pointed out that the constant threats of expulsion, exclusion, exile, banishment, and struggles for survival combined to create a trauma which lasted for many years after the liberation. Judith’s painful experiences did not end with her return to Poland. Like most of the survivors, she and her family saw no future for themselves in Poland. In April 1946, Judith and her family crossed the Soviet–Polish border. They initially moved to the Lower Silesian town of Kłodzko. As soon as they arrived in Poland, they tried to find a way of moving on to the American occupation zone in Germany. In Kłodzko, she joined a kibbutz, which like many other kibbutzim in liberated Poland, served as a gathering point for Jewish survivors who wished to get out of the country with the assistance of the Brichah. 68
Judith hoped that this might give her the opportunity to get to Germany illegally via Czechoslovakia, but unfortunately this was not possible. For the time being, the Karliners were stuck in Poland, in spite of their consistent efforts to emigrate. Upon returning from the USSR to Poland, Judith and her relatives had to relearn the Polish language and were forced to adapt to their new reality. It was not an easy task as they were still attached to German language and culture. During their Soviet exile, they had already been forced to learn Russian and develop survival strategies. Judith had to remain in Poland for several years until she was finally able to leave the People’s Republic in September 1957, when she joined the next large wave of Jewish emigration out of the country. 69 She then immigrated to Australia, where she settled in Melbourne. 70
After arriving in Poland, the refugees were confronted with the unimaginable destruction of their pre-war communities. For children in particular, the immediate post-war time was also the beginning of being able to comprehend the enormity of what had happened. They were forced to confront the fact that the families who had stayed behind were lost forever, compounding the loss of their homeland and places of their childhood. Bereft of their homeland, culture, and language, which had been stolen from them many years before, they were again forced to look for a new destination and find a new homeland. Their flight and emigration from their homelands were motivated not least by their experience of the Communist regime in the Soviet Union during their exile. After living in transition for so long and under such painful circumstances, all of the refugees in this article wanted to leave behind them Poland and later the DP camps in Germany as quickly as possible. Their desire was to begin their new lives ‘afresh’ in a new place in order to distance themselves from the traumatic experiences of the war. But their first steps in their new lives were very difficult, even with their exceptionally powerful determination, which enabled them to build happy and successful lives in their final settlement countries, such as the United States, Australia, and Israel. Newly arrived refugee children and their families faced various challenges adapting to their new realities. Although these were problems faced by most immigrants, including language barriers, obstacles associated with integration in an alien cultural context, hard labour, and poverty, these typical immigrant experiences were compounded by their particular trauma. Nevertheless, their arrivals abroad brought an end to the protracted, painful, and distressing trajectory of exile, flight, deportation, repatriation, and renewed exile, which had led them across several ever-shifting borders.
6. ‘Ostjuden’ versus German heritage
The experiences of refuge in Poland and later on in Soviet Russia clearly point to the important issue of national and cultural identity. This problem stood out in almost all of the children’s testimonial statements. After their expulsion from Germany to Poland as well as later in the Soviet exile, they had to face a new reality and were often stigmatized by having come from German culture. Although all of these refugees were formally Polish citizens, most had been born in Germany. Despite their citizenship status, they typically did not have any connection with Polish culture nor did they know the Polish language. Nevertheless, in nearly all testimonial statements, the children pointed out that they experienced stigmatization and rejection even before 1938, being categorized as non-citizens and marginalized as ‘Ostjuden’ by German Jews. 71 In particular, the younger generation of refugees was confronted with enormous identity problems.
In general, the German-speaking refugees in Poland found themselves in a more disadvantageous position than the Jews who knew the official state language and were familiar with cultural codes and social networks as well as the political situation. Particularly in the Soviet Union, having been born in Germany and having an affiliation with the German language, especially after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, was a definite liability. This group of children and their parents did not fulfil the standard identity categories at that time, in contrast to most of the Polish Jews living in their home country. In fact, Polish-Jewish expellees were Polish citizens as well, but their identity was a product of social interactions, which changed significantly over the course of their lives in Germany. Specifically, the refugee children were socialized in German language and culture. This social and cultural background very often complicated their existence as refugees in Poland and later on in Soviet Russia. Whether in Germany, after their expulsion to Poland or finally during their banishment in the Soviet Union, this group was perceived as being ‘strangers’. Undoubtedly, they mostly considered themselves above all as Jews, in a sense of ethnicity and religion, while technically being Polish citizens but having a German heritage.
7. After the Holocaust—who is a survivor?
In the post-war reality of the emerging Cold War, neither the general nor the Jewish public was interested in the latter’s stories and their experiences of exile in the USSR. 72 In Eastern Europe, even mentioning the Soviet wartime policies was considered taboo. In addition, in the United States and the newly founded State of Israel, the destination of many Polish-Jewish émigrés, these events were marginalized and driven out of the collective memory. The Cold War and the Western condemnation of Communism, as well as the tense political situation in the newly founded Jewish state, significantly contributed to the shift away from remembering their plight.
Moreover, the experiences of the survivors of the National Socialist concentration and forced labour camps dominated collective memory, essentially shutting out the memory and suffering of Polish Jews in Soviet exile. Specifically, to many returnees from the Soviet Union, life under the Soviets seemed like ‘paradise’ compared to surviving Nazi rule. As a consequence, this group rejected the idea of identifying themselves as ‘Holocaust survivors’. From their perspective, the ‘real’ Holocaust survivors were people who had somehow survived the ghettos, concentration camps, and forced labour camps in German-occupied Poland and elsewhere in Europe. For many decades, they did not speak about their particular experiences, which in their opinion were not worth mentioning, especially when compared to Auschwitz. In the early post-war period, as noted by Laura Jockusch and Tamar Lewinsky, this perception was widely accepted as the ‘hierarchy of suffering with concentration camp survival at the top and the Soviet experience at the bottom’. 73 Joseph Rosenbaum expressed precisely the same point of view:
Many years I did not talked about this. I did not consider myself being a survivor. Because survivors were those who came from the death camps, or working camps, and not many came out at my age. They were either older, or those at my age did not make it. [. . .] I was in Siberia, suffered.
But you are a survivor.
Yes, I am a survivor, yes. They convinced me and now I am a survivor. I am a kind of survivor. Nobody was killed there, it was only starvation or hunger. 74
What is also remarkable in Joseph’s statement is another important issue of ‘being a child survivor’. Some researchers have pointed out that child survivors of the Holocaust often remained silent about their wartime experiences in the post-war years. 75 ‘Not remembering’ is one of the strategies used to recover from trauma, which was also typical for adult survivors. On the contrary, unlike adult survivors, Jewish children had difficulties seeing themselves as survivors in the immediate aftermath of the war. 76 Some claimed they were ‘only children’ during the war with only a few memories and that their parents or adult relatives were the ‘real survivors’. Many of these children, such as Joseph Rosenbaum, only began to talk about their war experiences once they were older.
In recent years, however, the established criteria for the status or definition of ‘Holocaust survivor’ have been expanded. 77 For example, in their recent article, Alina Bothe and Markus Nesselrodt investigated the ongoing transformation of the ‘concept of Holocaust survivor’ since 1945. 78 Even if some of the survivors would still not define themselves as ‘Holocaust survivors’, 79 there are others who perceive their experiences differently. For example, there is Hilda Busch, who was born in Graz, Austria, to Friedrich Busch, a Polish citizen. In May 1939, she was apprehended in Graz and deported to Poland. In July, she left the refugee camp in Zbąszyń and went to Stary Sambor (present-day Staryj Sambir, Ukraine). In June 1940, Hilda was deported by the NKVD to a special settlement near Irkutsk. In summer 1946, she came with one of the repatriation transports to Poland. Shortly afterwards, she fled Poland, went to Vienna and finally settling in England. Hilda’s recollections of her war experiences, which reflect these changing criteria, are illustrated by a passage in an interview with her:
Hilda, Why did you want to tell us your story? For what reason?
I always heard about the Holocaust, [. . .] but I never heard people saying anything about Siberia. It is a part of the Holocaust as well. It happened in that Holocaust! Otherwise we would not have been sent there, if that would not have started. Siberia was not a concentration camp or death camp, but there were a lot of people dying there, [. . .] we do not even know where their graves are. 80
8. Conclusion
The written and oral accounts demonstrate the various pathways taken by the Polish-Jewish children who were born or raised in Germany and who survived the war in the Soviet hinterland. In addition and perhaps more importantly, they validate that their traumatic wartime experiences had consequences lasting for many years. Over the course of the years 1938-1945, as well as throughout the post-war decade, this group of children survived several fundamental, political transformational processes that deeply affected and irrevocably changed their lives. These ruptures caused a triple transition: as young deportees and refugees, they ceased to be children, were moved forcibly from one country to another, and went through emotional pain and trauma during forced migrations. All were refugees three or more times over: expelled from Germany to Poland, deported or sent to the interior of the Soviet Union, ‘repatriated’ from the USSR to Poland, fled to DP camps in Germany or Austria, and finally immigrating to Western countries. These extremely personal accounts of Polish-Jewish children not only open a window into the past and help us to better understand the special plight of child victims and survivors, but also allow us to reflect more deeply, thoughtfully, and comprehensively on the present-day issues of forced migration, displacement, and refugees’ crises.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research for this article was conducted as part of the project ‘Topography, Experience, and Memory of Life in Transition: Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939–1959)’, funded by the research grant from Gerda Henkel Foundation and Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah Paris.
1.
After the book title by L. Wening, From Nazi Inferno to Soviet Hell, Hoboken, NJ 2000.
2.
University of Southern California, Shoah Foundation, Institute for Visual History and Education (henceforth USC VHA), 34313, interview with Rita Berger (born Adler), 21 September 1997, Lido Beach/ New York, tape 1; idem, 36488, interview with Norbert Adler, 24 December 1997, Pompano Beach/ Florida, tape 1, 2; idem, 24427, interview with Fedor Adler, 5 January 1997, Long Beach, New York, tape 1.
3.
The term ‘repatriation’ is used in the contemporary communist Polish and Soviet documents without distinction to the most varied forms of organized population movements. But it was a deliberate distortion, as deported people were leaving their homeland rather than returning to it.
4.
Recent research assumes that somewhere between 200,000 and 230,000 Polish Jews escaped the Shoah by going to the Soviet Union: M. Edele / W. Warlik, ‘Saved by Stalin? Trajectories and Numbers of Polish Jews in the Soviet Second World War’, in: M. Edele / S. Fitzpatrick / A. Grossman (eds.), Shelter from the Holocaust. Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union, Detroit 2017, 95-131; M. Nesselrodt, Dem Holocaust entkommen. Polnische Juden in der Sowjetunion, 1939–1946, Berlin 2019; A. Kaganovitch, ‘Stalin’s Great Power Politics, the Return of Jewish Refugees to Poland, and Continued Migration to Palestine, 1944–1946’, in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 26 (2012) 1, 59-94. There are no accurate figures of Polish Jews who were deported by the NKVD (Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del) into the interior of the USSR. According to various statistics, which could be found in NKVD files and various documents prepared by the Polish government-in-exile, we can assume that some 70,000 were deported before 22 June 1941 (24,000 were imprisoned; approx. 20,000-30,000 were drafted into the Red Army; some 50,000 volunteers were sent to work in the Soviet hinterland; and the last group (approx. 100,000) had been evacuated or fled the advancing Wehrmacht). Hoover Institution Archives (henceforth HIA), Poland, Ambasada (United States) Records (henceforth AUS), Box 30, Folder 8, Deportations of Polish citizens from Soviet-occupied Poland to the USSR. Regarding the group of Polish Jews, being expelled from Germany to Poland, and later deported, evacuated, or who fled to the USSR, there are no statistical data. During my research on the experiences of Polish Jews in the Soviet Union, I was able to identify more than 50 families.
5.
The NKVD arrested Polish citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish, who were categorized as ‘enemies of the people’ or ‘class enemies’: e.g. political activists, religious leaders, the so-called capitalists, or those, who fled east from the German-occupied Polish territory, and/or refused to sign up for Soviet citizenship.
6.
In the recent years, a growing number of scholarly work has appeared on the fates of Polish Jews in the Soviet Union during World War II (WWII): Edele / Fitzpatrick/ Grossman, Shelter from the Holocaust; Nesselrodt, Dem Holocaust entkommen; L. Zessin-Jurek / K. Friedla (eds.), Syberiada Żydów polskich. Losy uchodźców z Zagłady, Warszawa 2020; E. R. Adler, Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union, Cambridge MA 2020; M. Nesselrodt / K. Friedla (eds.), Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939–1959). History and Memory of Deportation, Exile and Survival, Boston (in press).
7.
On the Jewish children’s experiences during the Holocaust, i.a. in Poland, see, D. Dwork, Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe, New Haven 1991; P. Heberer, Children during the Holocaust, Lanham 2011; J. B. Michlic, ‘Jewish Children in Nazi-Occupied Poland: Early Postwar Recollections of Survival and Polish-Jewish Relations during the Holocaust’, in: Yad Vashem’s Search and Research. Lectures and Papers, Vol. 14, Jerusalem 2008; F. Tych / A. Kenkmann / E. Kohlhaas / A. Eberhardt (eds.), Kinder über den Holocaust: Frühe Zeugnisse 1944–1948, Berlin 2008.
8.
From the recent work on Polish-Jewish children‘s experience in the USSR, see E.R. Adler, ‘Children in Exile: Wartime Journeys of Polish Jewish Youth’, in: Nesselrodt/ Friedla, Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (in press); K. Friedla, ‘Flucht, Deportation und Leben im Transit—Erfahrungen polnisch-jüdischer Kinder in der Sowjetunion’, in: F. Weil / A. Postert / A. Kenkmann (eds.), Kindheit im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Halle 2018, 110-128.
9.
I refer to the literature on the traumatization of Holocaust child survivors, R. Krell, ‘Child Survivors of the Holocaust: 40 Years Later. Introduction’, in: Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry 24 (1985), 378-380; S. Robinson / M. Rapaport-Bar-Sever / J. Rapaport: ‘The Present State of People Who Survived the Holocaust as Children’, in: Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 89 (1994), 242-245; S. Moskovitz, Love despite Hate: Child Survivors of the Holocaust and their Adult Lives, New York 1983. See also, H. Greenspan / S. Horowitz et al., ‘Engaging Survivors: Assessing ‘Testimony’ and ‘Trauma’ as Foundational Concepts’, in: Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 28 (2014) 3, 190-226; R. Horváth, ‘Memory Imprints: Testimonies as Historical Sources’, in: J. B. Michlic (ed.), Jewish Families in Europe 1939–Present. History, Representation, and Memory, Waltham 2017, 173-195.
10.
J.B. Michlic, ‘The Aftermath and After: Memories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust’, in: S. Horowitz (ed.), Lessons and Legacies X. Back to the Sources: Reexamining Perpetrators, Victims, and Bystanders, Evanstone 2012, 141-189, 142.
11.
H. Greenspan, On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Beyond Testimony, Saint Paul, MN 2010; idem, ‘From testimony to recounting: Reflections from forty years of listening to Holocaust survivors’, in: S. High (ed.), Beyond Testimony and Trauma: Oral History in the Aftermath of Mass Violence, Vancouver 2015, 141-169.
12.
USC VHA, interview with Rita Berger, tape 1.
13.
Behind the expulsion was a law from 31 March 1938 issued by the Polish government to revoke Polish citizenship in case of citizens living abroad. Polish authorities intended to revoke the citizenship of non-ethnic Poles. The actions of the Polish government prompted Germany’s response, demonstrating how quickly the authorities moved to begin the mass deportation of those Jews to the Polish border. See: J. Tomaszewski, ‘Wysiedlenie Żydów obywateli Polskich z Niemiec 28-29 Października 1938 r.’, in: Studia nad Faszyzmem i Zbrodniami Hitlerowskimi XIV (1991), 167-193, 167.
14.
In the historiography of anti-Jewish persecutions of the 1930s, these events were overshadowed by the November Pogroms. In spite of that, many studies have been published on the topic. A comparative study analysing the events as they unfolded in various German towns must still be written. Currently, historian Alina Bothe is working on her monograph on this topic. See, e.g., S. Milton, ‘The Expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany, October 1938 to July 1939. A Documentation’, in: Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 29 (1984), 169-199; J. Tomaszewski, ‘Letters from Zbąszyń’, in: Yad Vashem Studies 19 (1988), 289-315; idem, Auftakt zur Vernichtung. Die Vertreibung polnischer Juden aus Deutschland im Jahre 1938, Osnabrück 2002; K. Jonca, ‘The Expulsion of Polish Jews from the Third Reich in 1938’, in: Polin—Studies in Polish Jewry, Jews in Independent Poland 1918–1939 8 (1994), 255-281; A. Bothe, ‘Refugees or Deportees? The Semantics of the First ‘Polenaktion’, Past and Present’, in: S:I.M.O.N.—Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation 5 (2018) 2, 104-115. Alina Bothe is also the curator of the first exhibition on the Polenaktion, which was opened at the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin in August 2018.
15.
Instytut Pamięci Narodowej—Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive RG-15.206 M), Kolekcja ‘Z’, No. 1141, Syg. GK 166, Lista Polskich Żydów deportowanych z Trzeciej Rzeszy do Polski przez obóz w Zbąszyniu w 1938 r.
16.
USC VHA, interview with Norbert Adler, tape 1. See also, R. Mahler, ‘Mikhtavei E. Ringelblum mi-Zbaszyn ve’al Zbaszyn’, in: Yalkut Moreshet 2 (1964), 24, 25; Jewish Telegraphic Agency (henceforth JTA), Refugee Relief Cost in Poland Put at $1,000,000 for Last 8 Months, 8 August 1939, Paris; M. Frankl, ‘Citizenship of No Man’s Land? Jewish Refugee Relief in Zbąszyń and East-Central Europe, 1938–1939’, in: S:I.M.O.N.—Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation 8 (2020) 2, 37-49.
17.
JTA, Refugee Camp at Polish Frontier Being Liquidated, 13 July 1939, Warsaw.
18.
Joseph Rosenbaum’s father, Simon, managed to emigrate to the United States and left Germany in April 1938, in hope of moving very soon his entire family overseas. But events in Europe moved too quickly for him to execute his plan. Nevertheless, family Rosenbaum managed to get their oldest daughter Ines to Belgium, from where she ultimately escaped to America. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive (henceforth USHMM), 1999.A.0122.235, RG-50.477.0235, Interview with Joseph Rosenbaum, 10 February 1994, San Francisco, tape 1; JDC Archives, Lists of Polish Jews expelled from Germany by the Nazi government into the Polish border town of Zbaszyn, received assistance from the JDC in 1938–1939, AR33-44.
19.
Elementary school for Jewish children in which Hebrew and religious knowledge were taught.
20.
The Hebrew term for sidelocks, which are worn by men and boys in the Orthodox Jewish community.
21.
USHMM, Interview with Joseph Rosenbaum, tape 1.
22.
USC VHA, 3498, interview with Max Wozniak, 25 June 1995, Los Angeles, tape 1, 2. Bnei Brak is a town in Israel which is a centre of strictly ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
23.
S. Spector / G. Wigoder (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust, Jerusalem 2001; Y. Kose / M. Rinat, Sefer Dynów; sefer zikharon le-kedoshei kehilat Dynów she-nispu ha-shoa ha-natsit, Tel Aviv 1979.
24.
USC VHA, interview with Rita Berger, tape 2; idem, interview with Norbert Adler, tape 3.
25.
S. Friedländer, The Years of Extermination. Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945, New York 2007, 31; B.C. Pinchuk, ‘Jewish Refugees in Soviet Poland 1939–1941’, in: Jewish Social Studies 40 (1978) 2, 144.
26.
For further descriptions of this refugee movement, see L. Zessin-Jurek, Crossing the no man’s land. Polish Jewish refugees on the German-Soviet border (1939–1940), (in press).
27.
Szloma Beglikter was a cousin of Joseph Rosenbaum, USHMM, Interview with Joseph Rosenbaum, tape 1, 2. Both were evacuated to Tehran, and came to Palestine in the same transport in 18 February 1943, USHMM, RG.19.042, List of children who left for Palestine, 1943.
28.
HIA, Poland, Ministerstwo Informacji i Dokumentacji Records (henceforth MIiD), Box 124, Folder 1, Prot. no. 302, Zeznania Szlomy Begliktera. All translations from Polish and Yiddish are my own.
29.
Ibid.
30.
Spector / Wigoder, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life.
31.
E. R. Adler / N. Aleksiun, ‘Seeking Relatively Safety. The Flight of Polish Jews to the East in the Autumn of 1939’, in: Yad Vashem Studies 46 (2018) 1, 41-71.
32.
USC VHA, 11719, interview with Norbert Fluss, 4 February 1996, New York, tape 2.
33.
Y. Poliakov / V. Žhiromskaya (eds.), Nasielenie Rosii v XX. vekie: Istoricheske Ocherki, vol. 2, 1940–1959, Moscow 2001, 10; D. Levin, Tkufa be-Sograyim: 1939–1941, Tmurot ba-Hayei ha-Jehudim ba-Etzorim shesufhu le-Brit ha-Moatzot be-thila Milhemet ha-Olam ha-Shniya, Jerusalem 1989.
34.
A. Żbikowski (ed.), Archiwum Ringelbluma. Konspiracyjne Archiwum Getta Warszawy, vol. 3, Relacje z Kresów, Warszawa 2000, 13; M. Siekierski, ‘The Jews in Soviet-Occupied Eastern Poland at the End of 1939: Numbers and Distribution’, in: A. Polonsky / N. Davies (eds.), Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939–46, London 1991, 110-115, 113; D. Levin, The Lesser of Two Evils: Eastern European Jewry under Soviet Rule, 1939–1941, Philadelphia 1995, 180.
35.
Kaganovitch, ‘Jewish Refugees and Soviet Authorities during World War II’, in: Yad Vashem Studies 38 (2010), 85-121, 99; G. Hryciuk, ‘Victims 1939–1941. The Soviet Repressions in Eastern Poland’, in: E. Barkan et al. (eds.), Shared History—Divided Memory. Jews and Others in Soviet-Occupied Poland, 1939–1941, Leipzig 2007, 173-200, 195.
36.
HIA, AGB, Box 78, Folder 1, Polacy deportowani na Syberię, Pomoc dla Polaków w Rosji, 1 January 1941, 2-3.
37.
Special settlement, a camp in the USSR where civilians were forcibly kept.
38.
HIA, AUS, Box 30, Folder 8, Deportations of Polish Citizens, 1-8; idem, Poland, Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych Records (henceforth MSZ), Box 525, Folder 6, Rejony, w których są umieszczeni zesłańcy, 24 October 1941.
39.
Jews of German-speaking origin.
40.
USHMM, Interview with Joseph Rosenbaum, tape 1.
41.
Between September 1941 and March 1943, Jews made up more than half of the Polish citizens moving from the north to the south of the USSR, The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum Archive in London (henceforth AIPiM), Akta Ambasady R.P. w ZSRR, 1941–1943, A.7.307/40, Report on the Relief Accorded by the Polish Embassy in the U.S.S.R. with Special Reference to Polish Citizens of Jewish Nationality, January 1943, 32.
42.
HIA, Poland, Ambasada (Soviet Union) Records (henceforth ASU), Box 16, Folder 3, Udzielona pomoc i opieka nad ludnością żydowską w ZSRR (by Zygmunt Sroczyński), Teheran w sierpniu 1943 roku, 35, 54.
43.
30% of Jewish refugees in USSR died because of hunger, typhus, and other diseases, HIA, MIiD, Box 136, File 1, Pismo do Agencji Żydowskiej w Palestynie, 8 September 1942, Teheran, 13.
44.
HIA, MIiD, Box 46, Folder 7, Notatka do Pana Ministra, 2 February 1943, London.
45.
AIH, MSZ, Box 148, Folder 19, Brief outline of relief work among the Jewish refugees in the USSR, through the Parcels—Service, Charles Passman, Jerusalem, 25 February 1944, 1-4.
46.
Details on the relief actions of the JDC in USSR and Middle East, see, A. Grossmann, ‘Joint Fund Tehran. JDC and the Jewish Lifeline to Central Asia’, in: A. Patt et al. (eds.), The JDC at 100: A Century of Humanitarianism, Detroit 2019, 205-244.
47.
HIA, MSZ, Box 616, Folder 11, Report on the Relief according to Polish citizens by the Polish embassy in the USSR, with special reference to Polish Jews, 43.
48.
HIA, ASU, Box 24, Folder 4. The feeding centres, kindergartens, and orphanages cared for over 22,500 children of which 10,000 were Jewish, see, HIA, MSZ, Box 616, Folder 11, Report on the Relief, 44.
49.
AIPiM, A.7.307/40, Report on the Relief, 12f. There were about 55 children’s homes in the Soviet Central Asia, with a total of 3434 Polish children, including 2986 Jewish orphans.
50.
USHMM, Interview with Joseph Rosenbaum, tape 1.
51.
Ibid., tape 2.
52.
Ibid.
53.
AIH, MIiD, Box 123, Folder 5, Prot. no. 31, Zeznania Eliezera Helfmana, 5; idem, Prot. no. 37, Zeznanie Judyty Patasz, 4-6; idem, Box 123, Folder 6, Prot. no. 114, Zeznanie Eliezera Kretnera, 4; idem, Prot. no. 115, Zeznanie Luby Milgraum, 3.
54.
The total number of Polish evacuees with the Polish Army from USSR numbered as follows: over 75,000 soldiers and military personnel and more than 41,000 civilians. Even if Polish Jews constituted around 30% of all Polish citizens in the USSR, only 5% succeeded to enlist as soldiers or civilians for evacuation, AIH, MSZ, Box 143, Folder 11, Report on the evacuation from the USRR, 6 May 1944, Tehran.
55.
AIPiM, Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, A.11, Folder 380, Notatka w sprawie opieki nad Żydami w Persji i Palestynie. According to this document, until 1 January 1944, 965 evacuated Jewish children arrived in Palestine; AIH, MIiD, Box 136, Folder 6, Memoriał w sprawie żydowskiej podczas ewakuacji W.P. z Sowietów na teren Iranu, 19 September 1942, Teheran, 9; On the so-called Tehran children, see, e.g., T. B. Zion, Adom ve-Lavan ve-Reah Tapuchei haZahav. Yeladej Tehran, Jerusalem 1971; M. Dekel, Tehran Children. A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey, New York 2019. For more on the Jewish soldiers within the Anders Army, Y. Gutman, ‘Jews in General Anders’ Army in the Soviet Union’, in: Yad Vashem Studies 12 (1977), 231-296.
56.
The Central Zionist Archive, S75/4852, Correspondence and reports concerning the ‘Tehran Children’, 1-30 September 1942. After the arrival of the group of Polish-Jewish children in Iran, an agreement between the representatives of the Jewish Agency and the Polish officials (who were responsible for this evacuation) was reached, allowing the establishment of a Jewish orphanage. This agreement was motivated by the feeling that ‘the Jewish children in order to give them opportunity to practice Jewish religion, should be located in a special camp with their Jewish tutors’.
57.
AIH, MIiD, Box 123, Folder 5, Prot. no. 36, Zeznania Ziwi Elsan, 7.
58.
Joseph Rosenbaum is one of the protagonists in the German documentary about the fates of ‘Tehran Children’, ‘Die Odyssee der Kinder’, 2008, Directors, W. Berg / S. Vogel/ T. Mescatiello.
59.
A. Kaganovitch, ‘Stalin’s Great Power Politics, the Return of Jewish Refugees to Poland, and Continued Migration to Palestine, 1944–1946’, in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 26 (2012) 1, 59-94; P. Novik, Eyrope—Tsvishn Milhome un Sholem, New York 1948, 130-131.
60.
According to the Potsdam Conference declaration, large parts of eastern Germany fell under Polish administration, among others two-thirds of Pomerania, and the bulk of Silesia.
61.
On the eve of the German invasion of Poland in 1939, 3.3 million Jews lived there. At the end of the war, approximately 380,000 Polish Jews were still alive in Poland, the Soviet Union, or in the concentration and forced labour camps in Germany, Austria, and the Czech territories. Somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust in occupied Poland. Given the enormous fluctuation, it is difficult to determine the exact number of surviving Jews. See, A. Stankowski, ‘How Many Polish Jews Survived the Holocaust?’, in: F. Tych / M. Adamczyk-Garbowska (eds.), Jewish Presence in Absence: The Aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland, 1944–2010, Jerusalem 2014, 205-216; N. Aleksiun / D. Stola, ‘Wszyscy krawcy wyjechali. O Żydach w PRL’, in: Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej 2 (2008), 391-409.
62.
USC VHA, interview with Rita Berger, tape 3; idem, interview with Norbert Fluss, tape 2, 3; idem, interview with Max Wozniak, tape 4; idem, 30264, interview with Sara Brokholc, 10 April 1997, Szczecin/Poland, tape 2; idem, 30068, interview with Sara Bergman, 6 April, 1997, Melbourne, tape 3; idem, 44445, interview with Izydor Einziger, 4 August 1998, Union New Jersey, tape 6; idem, 14395, interview with Morris Gruda, 22 April 1996, Thornhill/Ontario, Canada. See also chapter 8 ‘Rückkehr ohne Heimat: Repatriierte Juden im Nachkriegspolen’, in: Nesselrodt, Dem Holocaust entkommen, 270-323.
63.
The complex and dramatic Polish–Jewish ‘coexistence’ in Poland immediately after the war has been studied extensively. See, J. T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, Princeton 2006; J. T. Gross / I. Grudzińska-Gross, Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust, Oxford 2011; M. Zaremba, Wielka Trwoga. Polska 1944–1947. Ludowa reakcja na kryzys, Kraków 2012; B. Engelking / J. Grabowski, Dalej jest noc. Losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski, Warsaw 2018; L. Krzyzanowski, Ghost Citizens: Jewish Return to a Postwar City, Cambridge, MA 2020; A. Cichopek-Gajraj, Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–1948, Cambridge 2014.
64.
See A. Skibińska, ‘The Return of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and the Reaction of the Polish Population’, in: Jewish Presence in Absence, 25-65.
65.
A. Żbikowski, ‘The Post-War Wave of Pogroms and Killings’, in: Jewish Presence in Absence, 67-94; A. Kopciowski, ‘Zajścia antyżydowskie na Lubelszczyźnie w pierwszych latach po drugiej wojnie światowej’, in: Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały 3 (2007), 178-207; D. Engel, ‘Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1944–1946’, in: Yad Vashem Studies 26 (1998), 43-85; A. Grabski (ed.), Pogromy Żydów na ziemiach polskich w XIX i XX wieku, Vol. 4, Holocaust i powojnie (1939–1946), Warszawa 2019.
66.
J. Tokarska-Bakir, Pod klątwą. Społeczny portret pogromu kieleckiego, Vol. 1 and 2, Kraków 2018.
67.
USC VHA, 26867, interview with Judith Karliner-Gerczuk, 3 March 1997, Melbourne, tapes 1, 2.
68.
The Zionist organization Brichah (operated from 1944 until 1948), helped Holocaust survivors flee Europe through the DP camps in Germany and Austria and bringing masses of Jews to Palestine, see Y. Bauer, Flight and Rescue: Brichach. The Organized Escape of Jewish Survivors of Eastern Europe 1944–1948, New York 1970.
69.
On the Jewish emigration from post-war Poland, see, D. Stola, ‘Jewish Emigration from Communist Poland: The Decline of Polish Jewry in the Aftermath of the Holocaust’, in: East European Jewish Affairs 47 (2017), 169-188.
70.
USC VHA, interview with Judith Karliner-Gerczuk, tape 3, 4.
71.
The complex relationship between German and Eastern European Jews is well researched. See, e.g., Y. Weiss, Deutsche und polnische Juden vor dem Holocaust. Jüdische Identität zwischen Staatsbürgerschaft und Ethnizität, 1933–1940, München 2000; S. Ascheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jews in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923, Madison 1982; A. Ch. Saß, Berliner Luftmenschen. Osteuropäisch-jüdische Migranten in der Weimarer Republik, Göttingen 2012; K. Friedla, Juden in Breslau/Wroclaw, 1933–1949: Überlebensstrategien, Selbstbehauptung und Verfolgungserfahrungen, Köln 2015, 167-190.
72.
This relatively new field of research was first concerned with describing the deportation of non-Jewish Poles to the USSR and their later ‘repatriation’, analysing Polish-Jewish relations directly after the war as well as portraying the fates of survivors in German and Austrian DP camps: J. Gross, Revolution from Abroad. The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia, Princeton, Oxford 1990; P. Polian, Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR, Budapest, New York 2004; K. Sword, Deportation and Exile: Poles in the Soviet Union, 1939–1948, New York 1995; M. Ruchniewicz, Repatriacja ludności polskiej z ZSRR w latach 1955-1959, Warszawa 2000; A. Grossmann, Jews, Germans and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany, Princeton 2007; A. Żbikowski, U genezy Jedwabnego: Żydzi na kresach północno-wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej wrzesień 1939–lipiec 1941, Warszawa 2006.
73.
L. Jockusch / T. Lewinsky, ‘Paradise Lost? Postwar Memory of Polish Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union’, in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 24 (2010) 3, 373-399, 377-386. See also, J. Goldlust, ‘A Different Silence: The Survival of More than 200,000 Polish Jews in the Soviet Union during World War II as a Case Study in Cultural Amnesia’, in: Shelter from the Holocaust, 29-94.
74.
USHMM, Interview with Joseph Rosenbaum, tape 2.
75.
S. Kangisser-Cohen / E. Fogelman / D. Ofer (eds.), Children in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath. Historical and Psychological Studies of the Kestenberg Archive, New York, Oxford 2017; E. Fogelman, ‘Holocaust Child Survivors, Sixty-Five Years after Liberation: From Mourning to Creativity’, in: Jewish Families in Europe, 233-248.
76.
See Moskovitz, Love Despite Hate. The change in both research and the subsequent public perception of child survivors only began in the 1980s, when the feelings of Jewish children were defined and differences drawn between them and adult survivors.
77.
The definition has been redefined for example, by Yad Vashem, the leading memorialization and research institution on the Holocaust, in Jerusalem. Accordingly, Shoah survivors are defined as persons who lived for any amount of time under Nazi domination, direct or indirect, and survived. [. . .] From a wider perspective, other destitute Jewish refugees who escaped their countries fleeing the invading German army, including those who spent years and in many cases died deep in the Soviet Union, may also be considered Holocaust survivors, 
[accessed 25 December 2019]. Eliyana Adler analysed several interviews with Polish Jews, who survived the war in the interior of the Soviet Union, referring to them as flight survivors. She came to the conclusion, that ‘most of this survivors group clearly differentiate their own experiences from those of Holocaust survivors; a smaller number do consider themselves Holocaust survivors and the smallest group do not seem to know to which group they belong’. E. Adler, ‘Crossing Over. Exploring the Borders of Holocaust Testimony’, in: Shelter from the Holocaust, 247-274.
78.
A. Bothe / M. Nesselrodt, ‘Survivor: Towards A Conceptual History’, in: Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 61 (2016), 57-82, 58-60.
79.
J. Goldlust, ‘Identity Profusions: Bio-Historical Journeys from “Polish Jew”/“Jewish Pole” through “Soviet Citizen” to “Holocaust Survivor”’, in: Shelter from the Holocaust, 219-246.
80.
USC VHA, 33714, interview with Hilda Busch, 28 August 1997, London, tape 3.