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Arrests and Deportations of Latvian Jews by the USSR During the Second World WAR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Dov Levin
Dov Levin*
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University (Israel)
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Extract

Mass deportations of native populations (Jews included) from territories annexed by the USSR in 1939–40 in amicable division of spoils with Nazi Germany and its allies had everywhere the same historical background and followed roughly the same procedure. Territories in question included the states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in their entirety, parts of Finland, nearly one-half of pre-1939 Poland, and the formerly Romanian regions of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , Spring 1988 , pp. 50 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities USSR and East Europe Inc. 

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References

Notes

1. For general background information pertaining to deportations from all the above-mentioned territories see Levin, Dov, “Arrests and Deportations of Lithuanian Jews to Remote Areas of the Soviet Union,” Crossroads, no. 11 (1940–41).Google Scholar

2. On this topic see Levin, Dov, “Latvian Jews with Reservations and with Adaptation to Soviet Authority,” Behinot, no. 5. (1974), pp. 70–96.Google Scholar

3. Testimony of Wulfowitz, Mendel, Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (IJC), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

4. “Latvian Jews in Siberian Exile,” in Eliav, B., Buba, B., and Kramer, A., eds., Latvian Jewry: Book of Remembrance, (Tel Aviv 5713, 1952–53), p. 317.Google Scholar

5. This seems to be a mistake, and should probably be 4,000, because all deportees from Latvia at that time amounted to about half this number.Google Scholar

6. About aid to the deportees in the city of Tzesis see testimonies of Bizvenski, A., ICJ, pp. 2–3, of Darvian, ICJ, p. 5, and of David Elkind, ICJ, p. 17.Google Scholar

7. Testimony of Wulfowitz, Mendel, ICJ, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

8. “Latvian Jews in Siberian Exile,” p. 317.Google Scholar

9. Testimony of Slivkin, Avraham, ICJ, p. 6.Google Scholar

10. Taubin, Boris Dov, With Delay of 30 Years (Tel Aviv, 1983), p. 25.Google Scholar

11. “Latvian Jews in Siberian Exile,” p. 318.Google Scholar

12. See testimonies of Dr. Herbert Rosenkrantz, Yad Vashem Archives, 03/2751, pp. 7–8, and of Bela Adler, Ibid., 2355/161, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

13. Latvia in 1939–1941 (Washington, D.C.: Latvian Legation, n.d.), p. 26.Google Scholar

14. According to some Latvian émigré sources, the number of “untrustworthy” Latvian citizens who were deported by the Soviet authorities during the same year to the interior of the USSR reached 32,895. For details see Bilmanis, A, Baltic States in Post- War Europe (Washington, D.C., 1943), p. 96. It appears that the figure referred to includes also the Latvian soldiers who were evacuated to the USSR in the beginning of the war and other evacuees, including Jews.Google Scholar

15. One of the reliable sources with references to the Jews of Latvia during the Holocaust, Max Kaufman, Die Vernichtung der Juden Lettlands [The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia] (Munich, 1947), pp. 44–45, estimates the number of deported Jews to be 5,000–5,500. For a similar estimate see Mendel Buba, Yiden in Lettland [Jews in Latvia] (Tel Aviv, 1972), p. 190. According to another source (Naftulai Dor, Meandering Generation, p. 37), the figure would be more than 10,000. In the ICJ testimonies, estimates fluctuate from as low as 2,500 (Behat, p. 5) to as high as 30,000 (Leitman, p. 4).Google Scholar

16. Testimony of Dovid Elkind, ICJ, pp. 9, 18. “There were instances when they took for deportation a poor Jew whose surname was the same as of another Jewish bourgeois family. He complained: ’Why are you taking me? I am a poor man; all my life I've suffered from hunger… Therefore return me to my home.‘” (Testimony of Darviań, ICJ, p. 5). See also testimonies of Golan, ICJ, p. 10 and of Yehudis Himmelfarb, Yad Vashem Archives, 03/2597, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

17. The list of the names is very far from complete and it could be described as a compilation of the names of Jewish deportees broken down by political background. The names were obtained from a variety of sources.Google Scholar

18. For General Serov's instructions, see Pajaujis-Javis, Joseph, Soviet Genocide in Lithuania (New York and Maryland, 1980), p. 227.Google Scholar

19. A copy of the report has been published in the Lithuanian Bulletin (Washington, D.C., 1948), p. 27.Google Scholar

20. The details according to “Latvian Jews in Siberian Exile,” p. 320.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 321.Google Scholar

22. In the course of the journey a certain Segal from Riga was the first Jew to die, the cause being that he was taken from his home right after a major stomach operation.Google Scholar

23. “Latvian Jews in Siberian Exile,” p. 322.Google Scholar

24. Testimony of Amiti, ICJ, pp. 9, 11.Google Scholar

25. With Delay of 30 Years, p. 55. Among the Rigaites who were scheduled to be sent off to work, Professor Mintz, an internationally known expert in criminal law, was 75. He tried to argue: “According to the law, you cannot force a man of my age to physical labor.” They answered him: “Who are you, an old dimwit to believe the laws?” However, he did not go to work and there were no repercussions. Ibid., p. 33. One of the deportees from Riga graphically describes in his memoirs the reasons for his recruitment for hard labor and its quality. “Me they sent further north. Like a dog that has grown and is taken away from his mother and given away to someone else. Barely a grownup, I was separated from my family. We were supposed to catch fish, there, in the region inhabited by polar bears, with hardly any clothing, without food. We caught very big fish, very beautiful and very good, but eating fish, no matter how small, was forbidden. We were permanently soaked by the freezing waters. When I departed from there, I was like a skeleton…” “From Leningrad with Fear,” Musaf Ha-Aretz, 24 December 1970, p. 11.Google Scholar

26. Testimony of Slivkin, Avraham, ICJ, p. 23.Google Scholar

27. With Delay of 30 Years, p. 39. However, this same source says in another place: “All the letters were written with the censor in mind. We learned to write only what was permissible, and we also learned to read between the lines.” Ibid., p. 58.Google Scholar

28. Thus, for example, when the first deportees from Riga reached the village of Bolshaya Urya on July 2nd, many of them tried to send letters and telegrams home and even to make telephone calls. There were also those who immediately upon reaching their first destination in Siberia sent telegrams and letters to their relatives in Mandate Palestine and subsequently even received answers (With Delay of 30 Years, p: 38; Testimony of Ezra and Rosa Rusinek, ICJ, p. 8).Google Scholar

29. Thus, for example, when a “special settler”arrived in Leningrad for a short visit after the war, he was greatly helped there by a relative who was an old-time resident of the city. (Letter of 28 January 1945 from Boris Taubin to Riva Fogelman, quoted in With Delay of 30 Years, p. 192.)Google Scholar

30. Latvian emigrants assigned to the city of Kansk point to a veteran Jewish Siberian (third generation in Siberia) by the name of Blumstein, who worked as an itinerant photographer in the surrounding villages. From him the deportees received information about where in the area their relatives and friends were located. He also accommodated for a while in his room Edgar Mintz from Riga who was badly injured (Testimony of Avraham Liak, ICJ, p. 7).Google Scholar

31. With Delay of 30 Years, p. 163.Google Scholar

32. About the fulfillment of the commandment of putting on phylacteries as well as of other commandments, see the ICJ testimonies of Gesia Kamiski, pp. 14–15, Avraham Slivkin, p. 25, Ezra and Rosa Rusinek, p. 10, and Esther Kagan, p. 16.Google Scholar

33. Not all the institutions to which admissions were available had the same standards. For instance, in Tomsk the deportees were being admitted to the Pedagogical Institute, whereas in Krasnoyarsk they were being admitted into various institutions of low prestige, but not to the Pedagogical Institute.Google Scholar

34. As an example of the paradoxical situation of this area, one of the “special settlers”in Krasnoyarsk mentions in his memoirs the following episode: “One summer day in 1951 the door of our apartment was opened and behind it stood half a dozen young frightened men accompanied by armed guards. They were the children of the “special settlers” from Kansk, Jews and non-Jews, who completed their high school studies and came to take entrance exams to institutes of higher learning. They wanted to leave their suitcases with us. The Komendatura in Kansk permitted them to travel only in the company of guards. One had to be escorted by armed guards in order to be admitted to a university.” With Delay of 30 Years, p. 148.Google Scholar

35. Yet in 1953 a “special settler”was forced to confirm in writing that he was exiled for life. Ibid., p. 158.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., p. 147.Google Scholar

37. Rina Binder from Riga was among the exceptional cases because of obstinate endeavors of her daughter Genia and her husband Shimon Imerman. Both of them fought in the Red Army in the war against the Nazis.Google Scholar

38. Testimony of Kamiski, Gesia, ICJ, p. 16.Google Scholar

39. In response to that, Gesia Teitelbaum travelled to Moscow and sat in at the entrance to the office of the Minister of General Soviet Education, Alexandrov, determined not to move until he agreed to speak to her. He suggested to her two possibilities: 1) to travel to Georgia and study there in any institution she wanted, or 2) to return to Latvia and to content herself with a limited choice of subjects to study. She chose the second alternative. (Testimony of Kamiski, Gesia, ICJ, p. 25). Subsequently, Gesia became an activist in the Jewish circles of Riga, where a monument to the martyrs of the Holocaust was erected despite the opposition of local authorities.Google Scholar

40. See the followng note.Google Scholar

41. Testimony of Kagan, Esther, ICJ, p. 17. Esther Winik received notice of the rehabilitation of her deceased husband. She then approached the authorities in Riga requesting compensation equal to the two last salaries that he received in Riga before his deportation in June 1941.Google Scholar