The Jews who went to Central Asia

[Horhug]

BBC3 Radio : Flight across the steppes: The Jews who escaped the Holocaust by journeying to Central Asia

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articl ... ntral-asia

A new Radio 3 documentary, Yiddish Glory, sees musician Alice Zawadzki journey to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to retrace the steps of Jews who fled the Holocaust in Europe for Central Asia. With her was the historian Anna Shternshis, the leader of a project bringing the refugees’ long-lost wartime songs to life.

[...]

Central Asia was one of the few places that accepted Jews fleeing the Holocaust. Altogether, about 1.6 million Soviet Jews and 200,000 Polish Jewish refugees survived the war in Central Asia, Siberia and parts of the Ural Mountains. You may not have heard their stories before, but this part of the world became an unlikely, if temporary, centre for Jewish refugees.

[...]

More evidence to show that the European Jews in WW2, went elsewhere ...



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[DissentingOpinions]

The question though is when did they get into the Soviet Union, because that’s where the Jews ended up during the Holocaust - Siberia, or the Far East.

[borjastick]

To me this shows that once again we have evidence of mass outward migration from the area of German control of jews.

The jews know these facts and so do those who bother to read and learn rather than follow controlled history and doctrine.

So one is left with the question of the value of a human life. Not in cash terms but in influence, power, control, politics and so on.

Clearly it is far more valuable to have six million dead jews in their holocaust than say only 200,000 dead jews who mainly died of disease and work, in fact anything but the gas chambers.

[Waldgänger]

The question though is when did they get into the Soviet Union, because that’s where the Jews ended up during the Holocaust - Siberia, or the Far East.

The when is unimportant. The Soviet criminal government is well known for lying, falsifying numbers, even altering photographs to remove people from history. I would not put it past them to move 1.8 million Jews away from eastern Poland/Belarus/White Russia during 1939-1941 and 4-5 years later say "we can't find them here, the Germans gassed them!".

[Some Dude]

The question though is when did they get into the Soviet Union, because that’s where the Jews ended up during the Holocaust - Siberia, or the Far East.

The when is unimportant. The Soviet criminal government is well known for lying, falsifying numbers, even altering photographs to remove people from history. I would not put it past them to move 1.8 million Jews away from eastern Poland/Belarus/White Russia during 1939-1941 and 4-5 years later say "we can't find them here, the Germans gassed them!".

This is a pretty baseless allegation. They were actually pretty thorough in their record keeping about population transfers, numbers executed, etc. No one denied they many Jews were evacuated from these regions. The problem with your narrative is that they also left several million Jews behind as well.

[Archie]

There were reports to this effect during the war.

"Uzbekistan Soviet Republic Becomes New Home for Hundreds of Thousands of Evacuated Jews," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Feb 19, 1942
https://www.jta.org/archive/uzbekistan-soviet-republic-becomes-new-home-for-hundreds-of-thousands-of-evacuated-jews

Development of a new Jewish center in the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan with a possible Jewish population of 1,000,000 people was predicted here today as tens of thousands of Jews from the Ukraine, White Russia, Crimea and other parts of Soviet territory who were evacuated to this part of the Soviet Union prior to the Nazi invasion of their home towns and colonies, started to map out plans for remaining permanently in this part of the world, in accordance with the order issued yesterday to the local authorities here by the Soviet Government in Moscow, instructing them to arrange for the permanent absorption of all evacuees.

I'm not sure if it was ever was as large as some of these early reports were anticipating (1M+), but it sounds like it was significant.

[Hektor]

There were reports to this effect during the war.

"Uzbekistan Soviet Republic Becomes New Home for Hundreds of Thousands of Evacuated Jews," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Feb 19, 1942
https://www.jta.org/archive/uzbekistan-soviet-republic-becomes-new-home-for-hundreds-of-thousands-of-evacuated-jews

Development of a new Jewish center in the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan with a possible Jewish population of 1,000,000 people was predicted here today as tens of thousands of Jews from the Ukraine, White Russia, Crimea and other parts of Soviet territory who were evacuated to this part of the Soviet Union prior to the Nazi invasion of their home towns and colonies, started to map out plans for remaining permanently in this part of the world, in accordance with the order issued yesterday to the local authorities here by the Soviet Government in Moscow, instructing them to arrange for the permanent absorption of all evacuees.

I'm not sure if it was ever was as large as some of these early reports were anticipating (1M+), but it sounds like it was significant.

Well, probably that number was considered feasible. One would have to subtract from this those that were absorbed elsewhere.
The evacuation is of course another issue there. Why were they evacuated?
Obviously not everybody was evacuated from areas occupied by Axis forces.

[slob]

It is estimated that no less than a million Jews are now concentrated in that territory, which has large facilities for agriculture and industrial development.

The Sydney Jewish News Fri 29 May 1942

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/261592256


The Sydney Jewish News Fri 6 Nov 1942

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/261597069

[Hektor]

This is gold:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/arti ... ettlement#

Also some info on 'Jewish Partisans'. Although some of it sounds like embellished stories.

In fact 'Jewish partisans' maybe a good search through the archives:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/search/advance ... startPos=0

[Hektor]

There is something that I wondered about.

In the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan there are to-day one million Jews. Tens of thousands of them were evacuated there from the Ukraine, White Russia, the Crimea and other parts of Soviet territory prior to the Nazi invasion of their homes. Among the refugees are also -large numbers from Poland, who were brought to the Republic after their release from internment camps. In Uzbekistan all of them have found a refuge, have been enabled to earn a livelihood, and to re-establish their creative life.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/arti ... tan%20Jews

Does that mean they were evacuated deported prior to Barbarossa (on the 22th of June 1941)?
Or only, when the preemptive strike by the axis was already an fait accompli?

I think both readings are possible. But the first would be more interesting. It would mean that the 'pulling out of Jews' was pre-planned either because the invasion was expected or because of a Red Army strike to the West, which required the resources from that territory to go for the armed forces of the USSR that were to invade Romania, Poland and Germany.

[borjastick]

As an aside last night I watched the first 20 minutes or so of the PBS America documentary about the first twenty years of israel. Thus it covered the period from 1948-1968. Predictably it tried to show israel as just and moral and inevitable after the holocaust etc etc. It interviewed many journalists, ex military, commentators and so on, all in israel I would say and all speaking hebrew and or yiddish.

What shocked me was those who were talking about the immediate post war period when hundreds of thousands of Ashkenazi jews flooded into the country of Palestine from Europe. The interviewees generally said these ashkenazis were very unpleasant people, with massive egos, a feeling of entitlement and superiority and that they looked down on what could be called real or local jews from the mainly Sephardic branches.

[Hektor]

....
What shocked me was those who were talking about the immediate post war period when hundreds of thousands of Ashkenazi jews flooded into the country of Palestine from Europe. The interviewees generally said these ashkenazis were very unpleasant people, with massive egos, a feeling of entitlement and superiority and that they looked down on what could be called real or local jews from the mainly Sephardic branches.

Sometimes they will be brutally honest, it seems.

If the Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe really had that ego... then that's actually telling as well. Imagine a people being routed and humiliated the past ten years... Does one really think they would still have an over the top arrogant attitude then? I'd expect a more sober attitude on their behalf.

The Sephardim are probably more humble, because they lived in countries that were less liberal towards Jews and also not as wealthy. In fact I can imagine the Turks being a bit less benevolent with them than the Germans, Poles or even Russians were. But well, using common sense on historic ethnicities is deemed 'racist' nowadays.

As for the initial batches of Jews from Europe. I'd expect them to come from Germany, Hungary, Poland. But less from the Ukraine or Russia. Still I wonder WHEN Jews were pulled out of the Western Sphere of control in 1941.

I have access to a German universities media library. Interesting how many Jewish publications frequently used the term "Rassismus" (racism) during the 1930s 20-30 years before the term became general usage in the US let alone Europe were this may have taken even longer.

In Germany "Rassismus" reached its peak in the 1970s for the first time... declining for a while and than boosting up again during the later 1980s. It was probably a process to get this to be some smart sounding academic term.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... moothing=3

It seems it is now replaced more and more with '-phobias'... Which sounds even more intellectual and really got some gaslighting ring to it.

[HistorySpeaks]

Large numbers of Polish Jews were indeed deported to the Soviet interior in 1940.

This has no bearing on estimates of the number of Jews who were in Nazi custody (in the KLs and Reinhardt camps), which is based on deportation data and(KL data on camp strengths) from 1942-44.

[Hektor]

Large numbers of Polish Jews were indeed deported to the Soviet interior in 1940.

This has no bearing on estimates of the number of Jews who were in Nazi custody (in the KLs and Reinhardt camps), which is based on deportation data and(KL data on camp strengths) from 1942-44.

Did you mean 1940 or 1941? Exact dates for deportations matter.

It does have no direct bearing. It does however bearing, when dealing with population statistics. Also If massive numbers were deported. There would be free residential space left afterwards. E.g. 'empty shtetls', etc.