This is Walter Zander (1898 - 1993), a German-Jew who was awarded the Iron Cross during WWI, a lawyer, economist, and a writer. He emigrated to Britain in 1937, but was interned on the Isle of Mann for 10 months during WWII as he was still a German citizen.
Below is a chapter from his 1947 paper Soviet Jewry, Palestine and the West originally published by the Victor Gollancz publishing house in Britain. A website featuring Walter Zander's writings is here, and a full pdf of this 1947 paper is here.
Zander does state at the beginning of his paper that the Nazis caused the "destruction" of over 5,000,000 Jews, but I'm posting this chapter to prove that the Soviets did evacuate almost 2,000,000 Jews from Eastern Europe deep into Russia, something which is now contested by holocaustians, particularly Holocaust Controversies in their recent book.
THE NEW SITUATION
A comparison of the Jewish position in the East of Europe today with that of 1939 shows the following picture: Before the War the Jews of the Soviet Union numbered about 3,300,000, (1) whilst the combined Jewish communities of Poland, Rumania and the Baltic States had a population of approximately 4,250,000. The total of Eastern Jewry therefore amounted to 7,500,000 of which Soviet Jewry formed 43% and the Jews of the five other countries together 57%. Today the Jewish communities outside the Soviet Union are nearly destroyed. Of the 7,500,000 less than half have survived, and the vast majority of the survivors live in the U.S.S.R. The centre of Eastern Jewry has shifted into the Soviet Union, the only country in the East of Europe which did not fall completely into Nazi hands. In vast districts with great communities of Jews; no German soldier ever set his foot. Before the German-Russian war began, Moscow alone had a Jewish population of 430,000, and Leningrad nearly 300,000. In addition, other Jewish settlements in the interior parts of Russia had sprung into life after the restrictions of the Pale of settlement had been abolished by the revolution; and with the progress of industrial development in the Urals and even in Siberia a steady stream of Jews had moved towards the East. So a large proportion of the Jewish population - probably more than one million - were living in peacetime already in districts which were spared the German occupation.
When war began, a flood of refugees moved from the border districts to the centre of the country. A large part of the population was evacuated by order of the Soviet Government. Industries were transferred, comprising both labour and installations; and where the plant could not be removed, it was destroyed in conformity with the ‘Scorched Earth’ policy. A great proportion of the industries in Kiev, Kharkov, Dniepropetrovsk and other towns was saved, and so were masses of the workers, employees and engineers. A publication of the International Labour Office (2) shows the extent of this evacuation.
According to these figures the evacuation from the towns and cities reached nearly sixty out of every hundred of the urban population. Even if one assumes that these figures include refugees who did not succeed in reaching the interior of the country, but remained in dispersion and in hiding on the land, those who escaped to safety still amount to at least 50%. This estimate is confirmed by the German occupation authorities. The Chief of the War Economy Department in the German Economic Administration in the East, Dr. Rachner, asserted (3) that by the end of 1941 at least one half of the urban population in the occupied part of the U.S.S.R. had been evacuated, and he estimated the number of these evacuees at more than 12,500,000. There is reason to believe that during 1942 the proportion of those who were saved by evacuation was considerably higher.
It is obvious that these evacuations had included a great number of Jews. The majority of them had lived in the towns, aid the urban population was the main object of the transfer. Moreover, they formed a large proportion of those sections of the population - engineers, workers, employees and officials - which were evacuated first: and, in addition, Jews as such were considered to be in special danger. If, therefore, the average of the evacuated town population is 50-60%, it can be assumed that in the Jewish section it will amount to at least 60-70%. The well-known Soviet Jewish writer, David Bergelson, estimated that even four-fifths of all Jews from the towns which fell into Nazi hands, were saved and brought to Tambov, Tashkent, Yaroslav, the Caucasian mountain villages, and to Siberian collective farms. (4)
In addition to the urban population a considerable number of Jews were rescued from the rural settlements. The majority of settlers on the collective Jewish farms in the Crimea, after wandering many months with livestock and with implements, succeeded in reaching Siberia and were resettled near Krasnoyarsk. Settlers from the Ukraine went to Saratov and were established on land which had previously been possessed by Volga Germans. Altogether the number of Jews who were evacuated from the pre-war 1919 territory of the U.S.S.R. is estimated by Kulischer at 1,100,000 but it can be hoped that the figure is even higher. If one assumes that the number of Jews in those parts of the Soviet Union which fell into Nazi hands was approximately 2,000,000, an evacuation of 60% would have saved 1,200,000; and an evacuation of 80%, as estimated by Bergelson, would amount to a figure of 1,600,000. An estimate of 1,400,000 does not, therefore, seem too optimistic.
To this figure must be added the evacuees from those territories which were integrated into the Soviet Union between September, 1939, and June, 1941, and the fugitives who escaped from Poland and Rumania proper. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from Eastern Poland, the Baltic States, Bessarabia and the Northern Bukovina either reached the central parts of Russia or were brought to Siberia. Their numbers at the time were estimated at more than 600,000; and although many did not survive the hardships, a considerable number were received into Soviet life. The London Jewish Chronicle, in 1943, gave the following report: (5)
‘Thousands of Polish evacuees are working in all parts of the Soviet Union. They are centred in Kuybishev, Saratov, Tambov and other places, but particularly in the Ural district. Many of them have settled on collective and state farms. There is a whole group of Jewish workers from Warsaw in Krepos Usen collective farm in the Saratov province. Thousands more are working in big plants and factories... Many Polish Jews work in flour mills and granaries. There are also thousands of young Polish boys and girls at school throughout the Soviet Union. Hundreds of Polish Jews are studying at the Leningrad University (evacuated to Saratov). The Moscow conservatoire has also opened its doors to Jewish students from Poland. New centres of Yiddish and Polish literature have been moved to Jambul in the Asiatic Republic of Kazkhastan.’
The American Jewish Yearbook described the development of Jewish wartime life in Siberia, as follows:
‘A new Jewish centre is rapidly coming into existence in the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, where it has been estimated that no less than a million Jews have been concentrated, including those from the Ukraine, White Russia and Crimea... and Polish Jewish refugees released from the Siberian internment camps.’ (Vol. 44, P. 239.)
‘New settlements were established in Uzbekistan, Kazkhastan, Chuvashia, the Bashkir Republic and other Soviet areas east of the Urals, Kokand, the capital of Uzbekistan, has become a place where the Yiddish of Jews from Vilna and Kaunas can be heard in the streets... Miniature centres of Polish historic Yeshivoth have been established in small Siberian villages. Faculties and students from Poland continue their studies in an area where there were formerly few, if any, Jewish inhabitants. Tashkent has been swelled by a tremendous influx of Jews from Russia proper... Jews from the Ukraine and White Russia were evacuated by the thousands to the Bashkir Republic where many of them now work on collective farms. The Kiev Jewish State Theatre has been moved to Jambul in the Asiatic Republic of Kazkhastan. The White Russian Jewish Theatre opened its season in Novosibirsk, industrial centre of Southern Siberia. Thousands of Russian and Baltic Jews are in Samarkand,’ (Vol. 45,p. 299.)
An estimate of the total number of Jews who in the U.S.S.R. were prevented from falling into Nazi hands, gives the following figures:
Since the loss of life during evacuations, sieges and other military operations was heavy, it must be assumed that the total number of those who ultimately survived is not larger than 2,700,000- 3,000,000. The Report of the Anglo-American Committee (6) estimates the number of Jews in the Soviet Union (Europe) in 1946 at 2,665,000.
Whilst thus the great numerical losses which Soviet Jewry had to suffer at the hand of the Nazis. are largely replaced by the expansion of the Soviet territories and the influx of fugitives beyond the border, Polish Jewry is nearly annihilated. Out of the 3,300,000 Jews who lived in Poland in 1939, 1,300,000 were incorporated into the Soviet Union before the German attack on Russia began: and the international agreement on the Eastern frontiers of Poland has essentially confirmed; this situation. Those of them who have survived, are contained in the above estimates of the Jews in the U.S.S.R. Of the remaining 2,000,000 only 80,000 were found alive in present day Poland; their number today is estimated at not more than 50,000. To these may be added about 70,000 Polish Jews among the Displaced Persons in the Western Zones of Germany and Austria, of whom the vast majority refuse to return to Poland, and another 150,000 in the Soviet Union who are said to be on their way back from Siberia. The total number of Polish Jews - spread from Germany to Siberia - appear therefore to be less than 300,000, and their number in Poland itself will hardly reach one half of this figure.
In Rumania the Jewish population before the war amounted to about 850,000. The annexation of Bessarabia and the Northern Bukovina (which have now been confirmed) brought approximately one third into the Soviet Union. Today the number of surviving Jews within the country is given at 850,000, to which must be added a certain number of displaced persons and fugitives in the U.S.S.R. The total number of Jews in Poland and Rumania together will hardly reach 600,000. In 1939 Soviet Jewry formed 43% of the Eastern Jews. In 1941 this figure had risen to 66%. Today they form 80% or five out of every six survivors. As a result of migrations towards the East, of the integration of refugees and deportees into Soviet life, of the massacres committed by the Germans, and of the expansion of the Soviet frontiers to the West, the overwhelming majority of the surviving Jews of Eastern Europe are now within the Soviet Union.
For more than 60 years emigration was the key-note of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Unbearable conditions in the countries of their domicile had driven the Jews overseas; and this migration dominated all events in modern Jewish history. From 1880 to the first world war the emigrants came equally from Russia, Galicia and Rumania. Between the two World Wars Jewish emigration from the East of Europe was mainly confined to Polish and Rumanian Jews. But since in this period the doors of the United States were practically closed, and Palestine could not receive even the wouldbe emigrants from Poland and Rumania, the startling fact that the 3,000,000 Jews of Soviet Russia had ceased to press for emigration hardly entered into the public mind. Moreover, Soviet Russia then seemed to be an isolated ‘far-away’ experiment, which could hardly affect the structure of the Jewish situation in the world at large. This is now changed; and with the U.S.S.R. comprising five out of six of all Jewish survivors in the East of Europe, the change has become self-evident. For the great bulk of the surviving Eastern Jews the pressing urge to leave the country by mass emigration has ceased to exist - quite apart from the fact that at present emigration is practically impossible for Jews and non-Jews alike.
In addition, the expectations of prosperity in Western countries which, 50 years ago, played such a part in Jewish hopes and dreams in the Eastern ghettos, has been severely shaken by a chain of crises, unemployment, immigration laws and anti-semitism in the Western world. The West no longer seems a paradise. The Soviet world has proved at least equally spacious and has become a powerful and near attraction for those who lived in misery in Eastern Europe. The wandering of Eastern Jews towards the West, which determined Jewish life for many years for the overwhelming majority of the survivors - now comprised in the Soviet Union - has come to an end. That is a change of fundamental and historical importance.
The position in Poland and Rumania is very different. True, governments which in the past had deliberately aimed at discrimination and expulsion of the Jews have been replaced by others who try to overcome racial and religious conflicts, In both countries radical attempts are made to solve the agrarian question - so largely responsible for troubles in the past; and the Soviet example of solving the problem of national minorities may radiate beyond the borders. But the disastrous experiences of the Hitler period have shaken Jewish life to its foundations; and there is a deep unrest among those who live in the regions where most of the massacres took place. The poison of Nazi propaganda combined with strong anti-Jewish traditions in certain sections of both peoples may last long, and the economic factor will make the reintegration of the Jews into the social fabric of these countries difficult. At the same time Zionism - always strong in these districts - is exerting a greater attraction than ever, and strong forces are working for emigration. In Rumania Jews appear to consider their position as slightly more stable than in Poland, particularly in the Regat which was less affected by the deportations. But here, too, pressure is strong, and Palestine appears as the haven of salvation. The Anglo-American Committee, therefore, summed up the situation as follows: “Of the 80,000 Jews found in Poland the vast majority want to leave; of those who are returning from the U.S.S.R, the majority will not wish to remain; and in Rumania about 150,000 have applied for Palestinian certificates.”
Notes:
(1) The census of 1939 showed a figure of 3,020,000 of declared Jewish nationality. But there is reason to believe that about 10% of Soviet Jewry did not register as Jews, particularly In the larger towns. See “Jews Under Soviet Rule,” Institute of Jewish Affairs, New York, 1941, p. 2.
(2) E. Kulischer, The Displacement of Populations in Europe, published by the International Labour Office, Montreal, 1943, p. 90.
(3) Reichsarbeitsblatt, 5.III.42, quoted from Kulischer, p. 91.
(4) Jewish Chronicle, London, August 21, 1942.
(5) April 1, 1943.
(6) Cmd. paper 6806.
http://walterzander.info/
http://www.walterzander.info/acrobat/Soviet%20Jewry.pdf
No mention of Birobidjan. Knee deep in the Korean Police Action. If there is one thing certain in this world it is that that dump is knee deep in the shit storm coming out east.
ReplySpy Zentral.
Or as Smiley would have known it, The Circus.
The data in the above study are too high.
ReplyWe show this an example of Kiev.
According to official statistics in Kiev in 1941, 220,000 Jews lived. 50,000 were drafted into the army. Jewish youth aged 14-16 was intended to reserve the Red Army. 80% of the remaining Jews were evacuated. A large part of the Jews became refugees and fled to the East alone.
Thus, in Kiev for the arrival of the Germans had no more than 20,000 Jews, that is, approximately 10-15% of the original number.
From your very next post:
ReplyOf the five or six million Russian Jews, only three to four per cent are connected with agriculture in any way. - Stalin
From this post:
Before the War the Jews of the Soviet Union numbered about 3,300,000
A million here, a million there.....pretty soon you're talkin about a lot of people. ;)