JEWS IN EASTERN POLAND AND THE USSR,

Transcription

1 JEWS IN EASTERN POLAND AND THE USSR,

2 J ews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, Edited by Norman Davies Professor of Polish History School of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London and Antony Polonsky Professor of International History London School of Economics and Political Science Palgrave Macmillan

3 ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / School of Slavonic and East European Studies 1991 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Ine., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y First published in the United States of America in 1991 ISBN Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publieation Data Jews in eastern Poland and the USSR, I edited by Norman Davies and Antony Polonsky. p. em. Seven of the ehapters were first presented at the International Conference on the History and Culture of Polish Jews held in Jerusalern in February Includes index. ISBN Jews-Ukraine--Galicia, Eastern--History-2Oth century. 2. Holocaust, Jewish ( )-Ukraine--Galicia, Eastern. 3. Galicia, Eastern (Ukraine}-Ethnie relations. 4. Jews-Byelorussian S.S.R.-History-2Oth century. 5. Holocaust, Jewish ( )-Byelorussian S.S.R. 6. Byelorussian S.S.R.-Ethnie relations. 7. Refugees, Jewish-Soviet Union. 8. Holocaust survivors-poland. 9. Poland--Ethnic relations. I. Davies, Norman. 11. Polonsky, Antony International Conference on the History and Culture of Polish Jews (1988: Jerusalern) DS135.R93G ' dc CIP

4 Contents List of Maps and Tables List of Documents Preface Notes on the Contributors 1 Introduction 2 The Sovietisation of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia fan Tomasz Gross 3 Some Economic and Social Problems of the Jews of Eastern Galicia in the Period of Soviet Rule ( ) 77 Aharon Weiss 4 The Jews in Soviet-Occupied Eastern Poland at the End of 1939: Numbers and Distribution 110 Maciej Siekierski 5 Jewish Issues in the Polish Literature of Exile in the USSR 116 Henryk Siewierski 6 Sovietisation and the Jewish Response to Nazi Policies of Mass Murder 124 Ben-Cion Pinchuk 7 Jewish Resistance in Sm all Towns of Eastern Poland 138 Shmuel Spector 8 The Welfare of Polish-Jewish Refugees in the USSR, : Relief Supplies and their Distribution 145 Keith Sword 9 The Jewish Issue in the Polish Army in the USSR and the Near East, Ryszard Terlecki Vll viii ix x 1 60 v

5 vi Contents 10 The Polish Government-in-Exile and the Erlich-Alter Affair 172 David Engel 11 Jews in the Kosciuszko Division and First Polish Army 183 Klemens Nussbaum 12 The Road to New Poland: Jewish Communists in the Soviet Union, Wlodzimierz Rozenbaum 13 Polish-Jewish Refugees Repatriated from the Soviet Union to Poland at the End of the Second World War and Afterwards 227 Y ose! Litvak 14 The 'Jewish Organising Committee' in Moscow and 'The Jewish Central Committee' in Warsaw, June 1945-February 1946: Tackling Repatriation 240 Hanna Shlomi Documents 255 Index 404

6 List of Maps and Tables Map 1 Poland Under Soviet and German Occupation, xiii Map 2 Modern Poland xiv 1.1 Demography of Eastern Poland, Cities of Eastern Poland in the 1931 Census Jews in the Polish First Division Jewish Officers in Polish Army Units and HO Distribution of Jewish Officers Jewish Battle Casualties 201 vii

7 List of Documents An Early Account of Polish Jewry under Nazi and Soviet Occupation Presented to the Polish Government-in-Exile, February 1940 (edited by David Engel) 256 Moshe Kleinbaum's Report on Issues in the Former Eastern Polish Territories (edited by David Engel) 275 Questionnaire and Protocols (edited by Joanna Hanson) 301 Polish Army Questionnaire Put to Jewish Soldiers who Left the USSR with General Anders' Army 304 Protocol no Protocol no Protocol no Protocol no Protocol no Protocol no Protocol no Protocol no The Proposal to Establish a 'Jewish Legion' within the Polish Army in the USSR (edited by Antony Polonsky) 361 Bernard Singer's Report on the Situation of Polish Citizens of Jewish Nationality in the USSR in 1942 (edited by Jerzy Tomaszewski) 373 Memoirs of a Jewish Medical Officer Taken Prisoner by the Soviets in viii

8 Preface This book owes its origin to the International Conference on the History and Culture of Polish Jews which was held in Jerusalem in February Seven of the chapters - those by Spector, Sword, Terlecki, Engel, Rozenbaum, Shlomi and Litvak - were presented as papers there. In order to provide a fuller picture of the complex problems raised by the position of the Jews in Eastern Poland, as weil as those deported from Poland to the USSR in the period 1939 to 1946, we commissioned the remaining articles. The Karski report was first published in J ewish Social Studies, vol. XLV, no. land is reprinted by permission of that journal. The Kleinbaum report was published in Gal-Ed, vol. V in Hebrew, but appears here for the first time in English, as do the other documents, and the memoir of Solomon Slowes, which is a summary of his autobiography which was published in Hebrew under the title Beya'ar Katyn (In Katyn Wood, Jerusalem, 1988). The subjects dealt with in this volume are painful and controversial. We have provided an extended introduction which, we hope, will enable the reader to make up his own mind on these topics, which have for long constituted apart of the 'blank spots' in both Polish and Jewish history. We are very grateful to the many people who have made the appearance of this volume possible: Professor Chone Shmeruk, Chairman of the International Conference on the History and Culture of Polish Jews, Professor Michael Branch, Director of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, Kate Moore, Publications Officer at SSEES and our translators, Morris Hoffman, Jakub Basista and Joanna Hanson. This volume is the first joint publication of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London and the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, Oxford. We hope it will be followed by many more. ix

9 Notes on the Contributors Norman Davies has written widely on Poland, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. He is the author of White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War, , God's Playground: A History of Poland and Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland, all of which have been translated into foreign languages, and have been published in Poland in either official or in underground editions. More recently, he has been writing on issues such as Polish Jewry, War Losses and War Crimes, Soviet Nationalities, Contemporary Culture and Politics. At present, he is preparing Europe: A History. Norman Davies is Professor of Polish History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London. David Engel is Senior Lecturer in Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and co-editor of the journal Gal-Ed: Studies on the History of Polish lewry. Among his many publications is In the Shadow of Auschwitz: The Polish Government-in-Exile and the lews, (1987). Jan T. Gross is Professor of Sociology at Emory University. He is the author, most recently, of Revolution from Abroad. The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia (1988). Joanna Hanson completed her Doctor of Philosophy degree in modern Polish his tory at the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, London University. She is the author of The Civilian Population and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 (Cabridge, 1982). She is currently preparing a study on a his tory of Poland from 1944 to Yosef Litvak is a historian residing in Jerusalem. For the ten years before his retirement, in 1980, he served as head of the Diaspora Jewry Research Department at the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption in Israel. He is the author of numerous works on the history of the Jews of Poland and Russia. His book lewish Refugees from Poland in the Soviet Union was published in Hebrew in 1988 and will soon be published in English translation as weh. Klemens Nussbaum is a historian who completed his doctorate at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of the book lews in the Polish Army in lhe. Soviel Union (U niversity of Tel A viv) and has published several articles on Polish Jewry during the Second World War. x

10 Notes on the Contributors xi Ben-Cion Pinchuk was born in Poland and went to Israel in He studied at the Hebrew University and the University of Washington and is at present Associate Professor of History at the University of Haifa. His books include The Octobrists in the Third Duma (Seaule and London, 1974) and Shtetl Jews under Soviet Rule (forthcoming). Antony Polonsky is Professor of International History at the London School of Eeonomics and Political Science. He is author of several books on Polish and Polish-Jewish topics including Politics in Independent Poland (Oxford, 1972) and, with B. Drukier, The Beginnings 0/ Communist Rule in Poland (London, 1981). He is the editor of POLIN: A Journal 0/ Polish-Jewish Studies and President of the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies. Wlodzimierz Rozenbaum is Soviet and East European Analyst at the United States Department of Defense. He is the author of articles on Polish and Soviet history and politics. He is currently completing a book on the Jewish question in the context of the nationality poliey in post-second World War Poland. Hanna Shlomi immigrated to Israel from Poland in She is a researcher in the Diaspora Research Institute oftel Aviv University and has published several articles on Polish Jewry during and after the Second World War. Maciej Siekierski is Assistant Curator in the Soviet and East European Collection at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, California. He is a speeialist in the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (with articles in The Journal 0/ Byelorussian Studies) and Eastern Poland, and edited Wiktor Sukiennicki's East Central Europe during World War 1 (1985). Henryk Siewierski is a visiting professor in the Department of Literature, University of Brasilia and researeher at the Brazilian National Council of Scientific and Technological Development. He is editor of the annual publications Aproximacoes - Europa de Leste em Lingua Portuguesa. Among his publications on Polish literat ure is Spotkanie narod6w (1984) and contributions to Znak. Solomon W. Siowes was formerly Assistant Professor in the Medical Faculty, University of Wilno. He is a member of the British Association of Plastie Surgeons and is head of the Maxillo-Facial Surgery Department and Leeturer at the Surassky Medieal Center, Tel A viv

11 xii Notes on the Contributors University Medical School. He is the author of articles and a book on Maxillo-Facial Injuries, and recently published Katyn 1940 (Hebrew, 1987). Shmuel Spector is the director of the multi-volume Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, and author of one of its volumes, Volhynia-Polesie (1989). He is also author of: The Holocaust 01 Volhynian lews (1986), and the chapter: 'The Gas-vans behind the Eastern Front' in Nazi Mass Murders, by gas (1983) as well as many articles on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. Keith Sword is Research Fellow in Polish Migration Studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London. He is the author (with Jan Ciechanowski and Norman Davies) of The Formation 01 the Polish Community in Great Britain, (1989) and of The Soviet Takeover 01 the Polish Eastern Provinces, (forthcoming). Ryszard Terlecki is a member of the Historical Department of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow. He has undertaken research on interwar and wartime Po land and is on the editorial board of the journals Arka and Czas. He has published widely on contemporary topics. Jerzy Tomaszewski is Professor of History in the Institute of Political Sciences of Warsaw University, where he is also head of the Research Centre on the History of Jews in Poland. He is the author ofworks on the economic history of Po land including The Polish Economy in the Twentieth Century (1985) together with Zbigniew Landau, as well as on national minorities in Poland, Rzeczpospolita wielu narod6w (1985), and on Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. Aharon Weiss is Senior Lecturer in Jewish Modern History at Haifa University, Research Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Editor of Yad Vashem Studies. He is the author of numerous publications on modern Jewish History in East Europe.

12 xiii SALTIe SEA '" G E RMANY SOVIET AND POlAND UNDE\ION 1939 _ 1941 GERMAN OCCUPA ~ Generalgouvernement d 'n'o ~ Terrilones..nco'r' rnnr31e I lhe Reich ~c=j ~~ ' ~S;OV~~~(~Oc;;c~up~a~'io~n~~'~========~ ~L- ~~~, d by Lithu301a... M~'_.,93..., MApl Po I an d under Soviet an d German OccupatlOn, RUMANIA

13 . Slupsk " ~; cz Toru n ~ Berhn VJ,sIV1a Cottbus. Poznan Kalisl Warta Dresden ~ 5\~~ ~Ij... ~ ~ v /". \. ~ Ka hntngrad ' ~ ' -'- ' - ' - ' -'~ ". ~ Augustow \ '\.. Olsztyn Plock eci> ~'I>\ t~ a ') \ \ \ Blalyslok \ Bug ( S,edlce T r Bries! ~ t6di Piolrl<ow Tryb. ~ Radom Lubhn.~. Chelm' ~ I 0,? Vilnius (Vilna) Grodno tli~~ ),.. <0.,.~" j I... ~.w.vw\ ~ /. \, 0- ).... "\.0"> Opoe. /.. J " <. ""0." """:' /.... \ '-: 115< Cracow J),. -J. J o Land over 500 metros lu/t:jmft',es 200 m,/es /00 V".~. -.-' ~ ',,"w "C7 / \,r..,.._.,\ ' I......,-J "- i..,.f -... \... "'"... ~ :l«lw6w LW MAP 2 Modern Poland >< :;::.