Evacuation To Central Asia (Jews Escape from the Nazis and Soviets)

Evacuation to Central Asia

(Jews Escape from the Nazis and Soviets)

by

Barbara Michael

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Published by:

Barbara Michael on Smashwords

Copyright © 2010 Barbara Michael

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Cover by Sagit Costa – website – sagit-costa.com

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, neither the author nor the publisher assumes a responsibilities for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of information contained herein.

Some individual’s names were changed at their request to preserve their privacy.

E-book edition May 2010

ISBN 978-1-4357-3548-4

Library of Congress Control Number 2008932605

This ebook is available in printed paperback under the title Evacuation to Central Asia from LULU .com. The title of this ebook is more descriptive.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my cousin, Sarah Bloom, for the inspiration to research and write this book and to my grandparents and parents who answered my questions about life in Europe. The names of those who perished in World War II are recited yearly on Holocaust Memorial Day.

To my interviewees, Shoshana Caplan, Avigdor Cohen, Hana Frankel, Aharon Leshem and Tamara Metz thank you for sharing your stories with me.

To my husband, Gary Michael for his continual support. To my son Larry, his wife, Ann and grandchildren Paul, Christopher, Ryan and Danielle. To my son Marvin for his computer assistance, and to his wife, Sagit Costa, for designing the book cover, and to grandson Roy. To my friend, Tzipora Hauser, who patiently sat next to me and together we edited the final version of my manuscript.

Table of Contents

Preface

Author’s note

Author’s family background

My Relationship to Sarah Bloom

Relatives killed by the Horodtchukas

Introduction

Chapter One: David-Horodok & Sarah Bloom

The David-Horodok Community

Michael Nosanchuk

Interview with Sarah Bloom

Chapter Two: General Political Background

Some important events in Soviet history

Chapter Three: Schools, Language, Culture and Zionist Organizations in Poland, Belarussia, Ukraine and Rumania

Chapter Four: Baltic Jews

Emigration from Lithuania

Chapter Five: Sovietization of the annexed territories

from September 17, 1939

Soviet Administration

Elections

Citizenship

Issuance of Soviet identity cards

Passportization

From the Testimony of Devorah Rabinowitz

Chapter Six:Deportation

Recruitment for labor in the Soviet interior

Deportations

Romuald Lipinski’s story

Chapter Seven: Prison

Michael Zimmermann’s story

Chapter Eight: Siberia

Special Settlements

General Langfitt’s Story

From the Testimony of Devorah Rabinowitz

Michael Zimmermann (Continuation)

From Yad Vashem Testimonies: Etta Moses

Yad Vashem Testimony: Abraham Zylbering

Chapter Nine: Amnesty

Chapter Ten: Central Asia

Zbigniew Stanislaw Patro

Moshe Grossman

Document Six by Tadusz S., born in 1927

Collective Farms

Michael Zimmermann (continuation)

Document Forty-three, Julian M. Polesie Voivodeship

Testimony of Matthew Joviaw

Romuald Lipinski’s Story

Uzbek Markets, as Reported by Menachem Begin

The Meeting of European, Soviet and Central

Asian Jews

Document 118, by Eliezer H., Izbica

Shoshanna Caplan

Tamara Metz

Aharon (Leibovoci) Leshem

Avigdor CohenDocument 21 by Jadwiga B.

Chapter Eleven: Jews in General Anders Polish Army

Moshe Shimon Bursztyn

Estonian and Lithuanian Jews in the USSR 1941-1945

Chapter Twelve: Evacuation to Iran

Ryszard Pawlowski

Stan Patro

Bogdan Harbuz in India

Urszula Paszkowska

Settlements in East and Southern Africa

Resettlement in Australia

Chapter Thirteen: Relief Help

Stanley Abramovitch’s Stories

Chapter Fourteen: Illegal Immigration to Palestine

and Absorption in the New Homeland

Hana Frankel

Aharon Leshem (Continuation of interview)

Shoshana Caplan (Continuation of interview)

Conclusion

Writer’s Note

Glossary

Bibliography

Documentary Film

Interviews

Yad Vashem Testimonies

Internet Sites

End Notes

Preface

My curiosity about this subject began when I found a cousin living in Israel and learned the names of twenty-one family members who perished in the Holocaust. Cousin Sarah walked to Central Asia from Poland. She worked in Soviet fields and collective farms (kolkhozes) for bread.

This book begins with our family’s relationships. Many aspects of my grandparents’ lives in Russia and immigration to America were similar to the majority of Jewish immigrants. The book also sets the tone for life before the World Wars. Material about the Holocaust typically focuses on Nazi Germany, while my book takes a deeper look into the eastern, Soviet side.

Author’s note

I have maintained my curiosity about where my ancestors came from: the town, their parents, brothers and sisters. I guess I have always wanted to fill in the gaps and better understand my heritage. My maternal grandparents came from the Eastern European town of David-Horodok and lived in Detroit, Michigan. I became a member of the David-Horodoker Organization in Detroit, Michigan along with other family relatives. The members of this group are descendents from this town. The group has contributed a David-Horodok exhibit at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan and donates money to many Israeli charities on a yearly basis. There is also a branch of David-Horodokers in Israel.

I wrote a research paper on the economics of Poland and Lithuania from 1300-1800. I did some research about Jewish Partisans. I have always looked for a vehicle to tell about the town of David-Horodok.

I have read many Holocaust books and memoirs. I became curious about Jews being transferred deep into Russia and to Siberia. I learned about an amnesty for Polish prisoners in Siberia and Russia. These freed people fled to Central Asia to avoid the bombings, cold, starvation and to join the Polish Army. My eyes were opened.

I wanted to know how the Jews, when the territory in which they lived was annexed to the Soviet Union, found their way or were deported to live in Russia and Siberia. What happened to them in Siberian prisons and labor camps? How and why did they get to Uzbekistan and other Central Asian Republics of the Soviet Union?

I studied the Sovietization of these annexed areas and was shocked by tales of deportations, terrible work conditions, starvation, disease and lack of humanity.

I read scholarly texts, Yad Vashem testimonies and other testimonies and memoirs in books and the Internet. I also interviewed individuals to learn about their life experiences. Now the Holocaust was sharpened for me with a list of family members who lost their lives. I began to recite their names and light a candle for them on Holocaust Memorial Day. I have learned of the personal sufferings of many people, among them friends in Israel, who also fled the war and were forced to be refugees. Their arrival in Israel was a lot harder than mine. Many came illegally in 1947. Others had to wait for the window of opportunity, when Russia allowed people to return to Poland and then go onward to Israel. Others came in the 1980s and 1990s, when the Soviet Union opened its doors for Jews to leave for Israel.

Author’s family background

My maternal grandparents came from David-Horodok, Russia. Today it is in Belarus. When my cousin Sarah was born, it belonged to Poland.

My grandmother, Esther Baruchin was born on March 28, 1878 in David-Horodok. Esther was only four feet nine inches tall (1.45 meters) with dark black wavy hair kept in a bun at the base of her neck. She was happy and loved to sing and dance. She was very artistic and talented in all needle crafts. She knew several languages. Her marriage was arranged between her parents and Louis Dworin. Louis had been promised to Esther’s older sister, Cherna. Cherna didn’t wait and married someone else. Upon Louis’s return from the army, after serving six years, he came to collect his bride. He was told she hadn’t waited but my great-grandfather said, I have another daughter for you. Esther had a nice dowry, mostly from her own handwork. Her father promised her a financial dowry of the equivalent of $100. However, instead of giving it to the couple in a lump sum, he gave it in little bits which didn’t allow them financial freedom.

Louis Dworin was born in December 1870 in Klessof near Sarno, Russia. They married in 1898. Louis was handsome, with blond curly hair and blue eyes. He was five feet four inches tall (1.63 meters). He was shy, quiet, religious and a gentle man. Louis served most of his youth as a soldier in the Russian Army. He was also a trained blacksmith and an observant Jew.

Louis Dworin’s parents were both fair with blue eyes, stately looking, religious and well off. His aunt and her husband were doctors in the service of the Czar and were held in high esteem. They sent beautiful jewelry for Esther upon their engagement. Great-grandfather Nathan, Louis’s father, had been a commissar for the Russian Army, in charge of food and supplies and feeding the army. In an extremely cold winter, his legs froze and one had to be amputated. He tutored children at home after he left the army. Nathan died in his early seventies and great-grandmother Bracha died waiting in a bread line at about age seventy-five before World War I.

Fivel Baruchin, Esther’s father, lived to the age of eighty-four and Leah, her mother, to the age of seventy-eight. Fivel owned a large house divided into two units for himself and a separate house for his son Moshe Fivel. Both father and son were blacksmiths and their houses were made of stone to prevent fires. Most homes were of wood with thatched roofs. Fivel was registered to vote for the Russian elections, the Duma (parliament) in a 1906 list.

Esther and Louis had a little house in a small peasant village about fifteen kilometers from David-Horodok. The house had a thatched roof and a clay floor, which she kept scrubbed snowy white. She made curtains for the windows. They had one room which had an oven that heated the room. The oven had a place for a steaming kettle, for tea or baked potatoes, on a ledge at the back of the stove.

Esther was a woman of strength and ability, and was a homeopathic healer. She was expert in her home sphere of cooking, baking, tending her garden and their cow. She had sewn fishing nets, prior to her marriage, for money to pay for her hope chest and was adept at knitting and sewing. She baked and bartered her baked goods for other food staples from her peasant neighbors. She brewed her own wine and alcoholic beverages and sold it by the glassful along with her coffee cake and homemade bread and butter to make a living. She was loved by her neighbors. She told stories and sang songs and lullabies. She made cream, cheese and churned butter from her cow’s milk. She worked as a domestic helper for new mothers. In this way, she was able to earn enough to provide for herself and her children while her husband was in the army. She left her children with their grandparents when she went to work outside the home as a wet nurse. (A wet nurse is someone who nurses another mother’s baby with her own breast milk.) She took care of her neighbor’s medical problems with ointments she made and a special prayer passed down to her from her grandmother. Louis was unable to earn enough to feed his family and was also afraid of being called back into the army for the third time, so he sold all the family’s belongings for a single ticket to America. He had served in the Japanese-Russian War and returned home with a Medal of Honor. He left Russia in 1910.

After three years, Esther wrote and asked him to borrow money and send for her and the children. She agreed to help pay back the passage money after she arrived. Esther gave birth to ten children, eight of whom survived. Upon arrival in America, Esther was thirty-five years old. The children were Sarah thirteen, Charles eleven, Sam nine, Harry six, and Doris four.

In America, Louis worked for the Ford Motor Company in the machine shop. He furnished an apartment in Detroit, Michigan with all the necessities. Esther took in roomers in one of the bedrooms and did the cooking and washing for the single men who lived with them. She also provided food and clean clothes for others. Her earnings fed and housed the family, while her husband’s salary paid back the loan for the passage to America.

My mother, Nancy, was the first child born in America in 1914, followed by Nathan and Philip. I was named for great grandmothers Leah Baruchin and Bracha Dworin.

To me, Esther was a tower of strength, more than me, more than my mother. She had endured many struggles and came through strong. She had had scarlet fever in Russia and was left with a slight tremor in one hand, and bad headaches. In her later years, she was becoming blind in one eye. I never heard her complain, except to be sad that she couldn’t make the knitted afghans (blankets) and sweaters she was used to creating. She baked her own loaves of bread each week and made fish balls and other Sabbath and holiday delicacies. Her table shone white and beautiful under the reflection of the Sabbath candles. I looked up to her as my mother figure — the capable woman, the loving grandmother who welcomed visitors, made special soups, cookies and blintzes. She always pressed a few dollars spending money into my hands. After I