Losy żydowskich uchodźców z centralnej i zachodniej Polski (bieżeńców) przebywających na terenie obwodu białostockiego w latach 1939-1941

Abstract

Jewish refugees from central Poland whose attitudes, conduct and lot differed from the lot of native Jews to a great extent, owed their specific situation to many various factors. The Jews arrived in territories seized by USSR with hope and beliefs completely unsuitable to Soviet reality. Their beliefs derived from Soviet propaganda, which was reaching Poland, about Soviet Union's prosperity, social order, lack of nationalism or persecutions. Apart from that, Soviet Union appeared as a powerful country capable of providing security, or at least, as an excellent place to survive war commotion. Apparently all these objectives were in no way comparable to the reality which was to become part of Jewish Diaspora's life, however, quite large groups of Jewish youth, communist activists and some socialists treated their way to the homeland of the world proletariat almost as the beginning of a journey to the 'promised land'. The lot of refugees, mostly Polish Jews, escaping east from advancing German army and hoping salvation is extremely complicated, and regards people who actually have not left any apparent trait in collective memory of the local community. These people, after north-eastern lands of the II Republic of Poland were seized by the Red Army and incorporated into the Belarussian SSR, found themselves in a very specific situation. For new authorities they became an enormous 'technical' problem and - at least from NKVD's point of view - a problem threatening state security as a politically uncertain element vulnerable to any activity of German special service, which can be easily seen in documents prepared for the needs of the Central Committee of the CP(b)B by Lavrentii Tsanava, head of the Belarussian NKVD. The refugees became incorporated into the mode of the Soviet dislocation policy as one of the first, whereas in summer 1940 - already as enemies of the Soviet state - they were deported upon the same principles and to the same places where they had got in February 1940 as Polish settlers and forestry service. It was a peculiar paradox of history that thanks to these dislocations most of them survived the hell of Holocaust, which in fact annihilated their compatriots from territories of north-eastern Poland. For the price of torment, blood and life of many of them these people survived in USSR as long as to 1946 when, thanks to the Polish-Soviet agreements, they could come back to their country. Small groups of refugees deported in summer 1940, released under the Sikorski-Maiski treaty and amnesty of autumn 1941, left USSR in summer 1942 together with the troops of the Polish Army in USSR and the Polish civilians leaving with them too.