User:Sm8900/Index/Drafts/ Soviet internment camps

Internment of refugees in Soviet labor camps during World War II refers to the mass internment of large numbers of refugees who hasd previously resided in Poland and other areas which were occupied by Nazi Germany forces after the start of World War II.

Overview

The labor camps were mostly located in Siberia, although a small number were located in areas further south that had more hositable climate conditions. In general, conditions in the camps were difficult, but often were not lethal. Internees received food and medical care.

Jewish internees

Jewish internees in the camps were often residents of Poland who had escaped from the Nazi occupation of Germany. many were subject to harsh conditions, but the majority were not subject to the murderous conditions of Nazi concentration camps. Often the conditions depend on the whim of the officials in charge of the camp. Some camp commanders could be very harsh and cruel, whicle others were reported to be more fair than the average.

All commanders were generally chracterized as harsh and brutal, but some were only harsh to the letter of the official Soviet doctrine. There no reports of camps where internees were treated with actual kindness, but some were more diligent about providing sufficient food and medical care to internees.

External links

Books

• ‘The Lucky Ones’, Ruth Franklin. Several groundbreaking new books chronicle the fate of the quarter-million or so Polish Jews who evaded Hitler only to wind up in the hands of Stalin.October 21, 2021 issue
• [Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939–1959)]. History and Memory of Deportation, Exile, and Survival]by Katharina Friedla by Markus Nesselrodt. Series: Jews of Poland; Copyright Date: 2021. Published by: Academic Studies Press Pages: 350
  • https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv26rr9xg
  • https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv26rr9xg
  • additional link: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781644697504-004/html
  • https://www.academicstudiespress.com/jewsofpoland/polish-jews-in-the-soviet-union

About 1.5 million East European Jews—mostly from Poland, the Ukraine, and Russia—survived the Second World War behind the lines in the unoccupied parts of the Soviet Union. Some of these survivors, following the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, were evacuated as part of an organized effort by the Soviet state, while others became refugees who organized their own escape from the Germans, only to be deported to Siberia and other remote regions under Stalin’s regime. This complicated history of survival from the Holocaust has fallen between the cracks of the established historiographical traditions as neither historians of the Soviet Union nor Holocaust scholars felt responsible for the conservation of this history, which at best is pushed to the margins and often silenced or forgotten altogether. With Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union, editors Mark Edele, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and Atina Grossmann have compiled essays that are at the forefront of developing this entirely new field of transnational study, which seeks to integrate scholarship from the areas of the history of the Second World War and the Holocaust, the history of Poland and the Soviet Union, and the study of refugees and displaced persons.

Life as an escapee of the Holocaust was terribly difficult and often lethal, but it at least offered the opportunity for survival and, therefore, an experience fundamentally different than the systematic genocide the Nazis unleashed on those left behind in the territories under their control. What became of these survivors varies greatly—some joined Soviet Jewish evacuees in harsh exile in Central Asia; some Polish Jews evacuated to Iran in 1942 with the exile Anders Army, moving on to Palestine; most were eventually repatriated to postwar Poland, and many of them then fled further to displaced persons camps in allied-occupied Europe, where they constituted the largest group of East European Jewish survivors. Shelter from the Holocaust addresses these very different paths in seven chapters, beginning with a general overview of migration patterns, including a specific example of postwar memory focusing on those who ended up in Australia. The book continues with an exploration of the diverse ways Polish Jewish survivors talk about their experiences and identity with regard to the Holocaust, and ends with one family’s personal narrative of experiences in Uzbekistan during World War II.

Shelter from the Holocaust came to fruition as the result of the opening of formerly classified Soviet and Polish archives, determined efforts to interview the last remaining Holocaust survivors, and the growing interest in the histories of displaced persons and migration. This pioneering volume will interest scholars of eastern European history and Holocaust studies, as well as those with an interest in refugee and migration issues.

• Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union. Edited by Mark Edele, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and Atina Grossmann. Published: December 2017. .WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • addl link https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/shelter-holocaust

Articles

• ESCAPE FROM GERMAN-OCCUPIED EUROPE. Leaving German-occupied Europe became more and more difficult after the start of World War II and almost impossible as the war progressed. Official website, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed May 16, 2023.

• Jews under Soviet Rule, Attempts by religious communities to renew Jewish life during the postwar reconstruction period The case of Belorussia, 1944-1953. Leonid Smilovitsky

Videos

• MIRIAM LEWENT DESCRIBES DEPORTATION TO A VILLAGE NEAR TOMSK, SIBERIA. Miriam and her family fled their home when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. They were interned by Soviet forces and deported to Siberia. Near the city of Tomsk, Miriam cut trees to earn food rations. When the Soviet Union went to war with Germany in June 1941, the Soviets released Miriam and her family. They sold their Red Cross rations for train fare and intended to return to Poland, but most of the family settled in Kazakhstan during the rest of the war. There, her father taught Hebrew to Jewish children.
• ALEXANDER SCHENKER DESCRIBES WORKING AS A LUMBERJACK IN A LABOR CAMP IN SIBERIA. Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Alexander and his family fled eastward to Lvov. His father then fled to Vilna, hoping to obtain visas for the family to escape through Japan. The rest of the family was caught while trying to cross border into Lithuania in order to meet up with Alexander's father. They returned to Lvov. Alexander and his mother were later arrested for refusing to declare Soviet citizenship. They were sent to a labor camp in the Soviet interior. After their release from the camp they remained in the Soviet Union until 1946. Alexander's father had been able to flee to Japan and then to the United States in 1941; the rest of the family immigrated to the United States in 1947.