1/3 of Holocaust Survivors

Always interesting to see where a thread goes. Not judging, just an observation.

 

How did they "spend the war in the USSR" ? The German advance went far beyond the 1939 Polish borders and the SS goons and other "special bands" were not that far behind the front line troops. AFAIK the Soviets had no refugee camps, if they were there they were likely to get drafted and seen a lot more German soldiers than they would like, is not part of draft age group/sex the would end up in factories or farms, there were significant food shortages in the USSR doing wartime and not much willingness to waste manpower.

 

The Soviets occupied a part of Poland, it was the part where most of the Polish Jews lived. And some Jews fled to the Soviet zone later.
The Soviets deported many of those Jews to the interior (foreigners, "unreliable" people weren't allowed to live close to the borders), and many fled with the retreating Soviet Army.
Those were the people who survived. The others didn't. "Non-Soviet" Jews are rarity because they all were murdered.

 

Stalin was ready to make soviet-Jews a rarity as well but his death ended the program before it truly started....

The so-called Doctors' Plot coincided with a spate of anti-Zionist propaganda and was followed by a number of arrests as the ailing Soviet dictator tried to bolster his position.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/15/newsid_4094000/4094899.stm

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-doctor-s-plot

The arrests in East Germany were just the beginning of a purge which extended to all political parties, trade unions, youth organisations, women's and pensioners' groups.
It followed similar purges in other Eastern Bloc countries, as the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin sought to consolidate his power behind the Iron Curtain.
Forces of the East German police raided the homes and offices of all Jewish people in the Soviet Zone and East Berlin. Many documents were confiscated and families were instructed to remain close to their homes.
Georg Dertinger was imprisoned in 1954 for espionage and treason. He was pardoned in 1964.

 

This was post-war development, most of the Polish Jews fled the USSR in 1945, 1946 - pre-war Polish citizens had the right to choose between Poland and the USSR.
So the Jews, being reasonable people, left and went straight to US, Canada, Australia, Western Europe.
Only a minority chose Israel because the Jews were reasonable people.

But the Russian Jews didn't have the right so they had to stay and enjoy socialism.
But what happened to them was no different from what the Russian had to endure. And many minorities suffered more from persecutions of every kind than the Russian Jews.

 

I would agree that calling someone who left Poland in 1939 a "holocaust survivors" is borderline, that's not comparable to people who survived the camps or the round ups, would you call Einstein or Fermi a "holocaust survivor" ?. But I do not see the Soviet logic behind deportation of Jews in 1939, not that they always had one, how would Jews be more "unreliable" than the average Poles?, they were likely to fear Hitler a lot more.

"fleeing the USSR" in 1945 - 1946 looks possible but problematical, there was massive disruption and food shortages in Eastern Europe and transportation was iffy, and if your starting point was some relocation area deep in the USSR there was a long way to go. Not that much help was likely to come from the Jewish organizations that were focused on getting as many people to Palestine as they could (BTW you could not "choose Israel" in 1945-46, no Israel before 1948). Don't really see big numbers of people achieving that.

On the other hand I believe there was a massive influx of USSR Jews to Israel later on and some may have not liked it that much and moved on, I have come across a few of those and they were pretty smart people doing very well in business.

 

For five years the Soviets supplied millions of their soldiers fighting at the Eastern Front. Just only for this reason their transportation capabilities were enormous.
It took them just a year to move 1.7 millions Poles from the annexed by the USSR Polish territories to Poland, it wasn't big deal.

The Soviets didn't persecute people for their nationality but for their culture, faith, wealth, political affiliation - such people were unreliable by definition. And unreliable people had to be eliminated.

The goal was cultural, not physical destruction.

So the members of the Betar movement were all executed, others less "dangerous" Jews deported deep into the USSR, and the rest forbidden to live close to the border - so they had to "deported" themselves, although not that deep into the USSR as the others.

 

I don't think almost anyone (outside the situation) actually hates Israel...I don't know enough about them to even dislike them...but one can judge the situation on an academic level...I have opinions regarding Palestine and Israel...I don't know, love or hate either, but the circumstances are there and people can have an opinion - for or against.
People who start calling people anti-semites are just ignoramuses trying to shut down a frank, honest conversation.
I here racist, misogynist, and homophobe...also words designed to shut down people's own opinion.
Israel is NOT untouchable as a topic and people can think what they want so long as they have a good argument. If something similar happened in Australia I would be the equivalent of a Palestinian terrorist...and id be proud of myself.