Exile of Jews in the Soviet interior during World War II

During World War II, large numbers of Polish and Soviet Jews fled eastwards from German-occupied Europe or were deported by the Soviet Union. The majority of exiled Polish Jews lived in various labor camps and labor colonies in Central Asia and Siberia for the duration of the war. At the end of the war, Jews displaced in the Soviet Union were the largest group of surviving European Jews, as most of those left behind died in the Holocaust.
After the invasion of Poland in 1939 by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, between 150,000 and 300,000 Polish Jews entered in the Soviet Union in order to flee the Nazis. Some individuals reported anecdotally that Nazi soldiers seemed almost helpful in pushing the refugees to make their way to Soviet-controlled territory. There are several memoirs written by individual refugees after the war which corroborate this. Many Jews fled to Bialystock, which was considered safer due to the Soviets having military control of that area.
In the first part of the war, the Soviet Union invaded Poland, and all Polish people were treated with basic hostility (most notorious being the 1940 Katyn massacre of Polish and Polish Jewish officers). Their status underwent a major change when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, thereby causing the Soviet Union to join the Allies. Polish citizens were now considered to be allied with the Soviet Union in the war against the Nazis. As the war progressed, the Soviet Army created some military units consisting of people from Poland.
As the war progressed and the Nazi invaders got further into the Soviet Union, huge numbers of Soviet citizens, mostly Jewish, sought safety by moving east, further into the interior, to escape the Nazi hordes. Due to its knowledge of how Nazis treated Jews, the Soviet government moved Jews from areas such as the Crimean Peninsula into areas further away from the front-lines.
Leo Cooper wrote an autobiographical memoir which was cited by scholarly works, in which he recounted that once Poland was invaded, he fled to the USSR, and accepted an offer to become a Soviet citizen. His skills as a trained "turner", or lathe operator, made him highly-demanded as a worker. He found his treatment by the nearby Russians to be overall favorable.
Beginning in Spring 1940, the deportation of Polish nationals and Jews to the camps occurred mostly by train. Although they were not as brutal as the Nazi transports of the Holocaust, the conditions were still brutal and degrading. All deportees were jammed into cattle cars, for which the only toilet was a hole in the floor. One extensive article by researcher Jonah Goldlust reports as follows:
The labor camps were mostly located in Siberia, although a small number were located in areas further south that had more hospitable climate conditions. In general, conditions in the camps were difficult but often were not lethal. Internees received food and medical care.
Conditions in the camp were harsh, but also clearly showed that the Soviet government mainly intended for internees to serve as forced labor and that the Nazi efforts of genocide during that period were not a model or a parallel for the Soviet methods of running the camp.
Internees were placed in bunks that were little more than wooden pallets. Food was not plentiful during the initial period. Any female internees who became pregnant were given medical care. Delousing was crucial for new internees, before becoming residents in such crowded conditions; this was carried out by having the new internees rub a solid yellow chemical mixture onto each other.
Unlike Nazi camps, there was no genocidal machinery, but the conditions were still brutal. Goldust writes:
As the war progressed, conditions sometimes improved; for example, in some camps, large new buildings were built for use of internees.
Many camp internees were given professional roles and vocational roles if they had existing training and expertise. Any internees who were physicians were tasked with caring for internees. Carpenters and masons assisted in building camp structures.
Average people in the camps were often assigned to help with logging and forestry work. Some internees were sent to work on local farms in tending crops and harvesting food.
The conditions in the camps varied depending upon the location, and often for individual groups.
A group of students from the Novardok Yeshiva were deported in a group from Poland to Siberia. Their leader and head teacher was Rabbi Yehuda Leib Nekritz. Their written accounts describe how the NKVD subjected them to harsh persecution, including confiscating all religious texts and prohibiting most religious services. One of the prominent rabbis interned with this group was Rav Yaakov Galinsky.
Despite a long chain of constant persecutions, the yeshiva students continually tried to observe the Sabbath.According to the biography of Rav Galinsky, the Jewish students would pass pieces of wood to each other, to avoid transgressing the Sabbath prohibition against carrying objects. According to this account, the Soviet supervisors for this work group actually commended them for this method, as being highly efficient.
According to an account by Rav Yaakov Pasternak, recounted in the book by Rabbi Shlomo Weintraub, Rabbi Nekritz was consistent in advocating for the right to observe the Sabbath, and finally permission was granted. Pasternak states that in order to show their willingness to meet expectations and to do their work, the students would present themselves to the camp officials when the Sabbath ended on Saturday night, in order to do their workload and to make up for the time missed during the Sabbath.
The exile of Jews to Siberia and other regions of the Soviet Union during World War II has been noted by many historians to be a relatively neglected chapter of Jewish history. In fact, the recent growing awareness of this topical area as of the early 2020s in itself is one aspect of this history. In recent years, historians, documentary filmmakers, and other chroniclers have begun to pay increasing attention to this area of history.
In 2013, one historian wrote:
Owing to the nature of the historical record, much information on camp conditions is based on individual accounts, either in published works or interviews or both. Such accounts have validity on the basis of being depicted in published works by reliable authors, or else compiled by reliable researchers. They often provide valuable data about conditions in the aggregate, especially if corroborated by several accounts. As accounts of firsthand experiences, they do have some significance within the overall historical record.
Numerous published accounts by Jewish authors and publishers provide individual and anecdotal experiences. Owing to Jewish historical experiences and persecution during this era, various works published on the topic of Jewish history provide some substantial historical materials on this topical area.
On the role and the context for individual memoirs, Goldlust writes:
Edith Sekules, a former internee, wrote a memoir about her experiences. Sekules emigrated to Ireland with her husband and children and ran the Kilkeel Knitting Factory there. Her son Walter spoke publicly and gave interviews to major newspapers about experiences in the Soviet camps.
The memoir by Edith Sekules relates the anecdotes below.
A group of students from the Novardok yeshiva were deported as a group, and largely remained together during their internment in Siberia. Their experiences are recounted in The Alter of Novardok: The life of Rav Yosef Yoizel Horowitz and his worldwide impact, a book published in 2020 by ArtScroll.
At the beginning of the war, all Polish internees were considered hostile aliens. When the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, then the Soviets became allies of the Polish, and internees were given increased options to serve in the war. Some Polish units were established by the Red Army.
Internees were given periodic updates on the progress of the war. When the Germans attacked Stalingrad, some camps were potentially threatened by the proximity of German forces.
Internees received news on the Nazi persecution of Jews, but often thought this was merely Soviet propaganda. The majority of internees had no awareness of the scale of the destruction until they returned home once the war ended.
Once the war ended, internees were permitted to go home. Permission for this was provided at various times for batches of refugees based on their national origins. Due to limitations on available trains, this process was very gradual. Internees from Austria and Hungary did not get permission until January 1947.