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Recommended Books/Recordings/Documentaries
Recommended Books/Recordings/Documentaries
I Saw the Angel of Death: Experiences of Polish Jews Deported to the USSR during World War II by Maciej Siekierski and Feliks Tych (Editors).
Video Interview about the book
Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Soviet Union, 2020, Interview with author, Eliyana Adler
Video (Center for Jewish History)
Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939–1959): History and Memory of Deportation, Exile, and Survival, published 2021, Edited by Katharina Friedla and Markus Nesselrodt
Saved by Deportation, 2007 Documentary. In 1940, Stalin ordered the deportation of 200,000 Jews from Poland -- including hundreds of Jewish men from Korets -- to serve in the Soviet army and/or work in labor camps in the Soviet Union, with many being sent to Siberia. This documentary is their story. See film summary
Polish Jews in the USSR during World War II, speaker: Serafima Velkovich, Head of the Family Roots Research Section at the Yad Vashem Archives
Video (Center for Jewish History)
Escape to Uzbekistan
Escape to Uzbekistan
Many Jews from Korets fled to the Soviet Union, especially Uzbekistan, including Tashkent — which was said to be the "City of Bread" — and Namangan. However, they found that food was scarce, and hunger, starvation and disease were everywhere. Some Koretsers died there.
Holocaust Testimonies
Holocaust Testimonies
Sonia Avret Tessler and Mendel Tessler described their lives in Tashkent. Their eldest daughter, Celia Tessler Atkin, was born in Tashkent.
Jewish Refugees in Tashkent
Jewish Refugees in Tashkent
Jewish Refugees in Tashkent (JewishGen), is a database of the 152,000 Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union who were evacuated to Tashkent (Uzbekistan) and then went on to different localities in Uzbekistan in 1941-1942.
Flight Across the Steppes
Flight Across the Steppes
The BBC Radio3 Sunday Feature, Flight across the steppes: The Jews who escaped the Holocaust by journeying to Central Asia, sees musician Alice Zawadzki journey to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to retrace the steps of Jews who fled the Holocaust in Europe for Central Asia. With her was the historian Anna Shternshis, the leader of a project bringing the refugees’ long-lost wartime songs to life.
Central Asia was one of the few places that accepted Jews fleeing the Holocaust. Altogether, about 1.6 million Soviet Jews and 200,000 Polish Jewish refugees survived the war in Central Asia, Siberia and parts of the Ural Mountains.
Chelyabinsk Labor Camp, Siberia
Chelyabinsk Labor Camp, Siberia
Photo: Boruch (Buzia) Balaj, Chelyabinsk labor camp, Siberia, USSR, early 1940s (far right, full figure view). Many of the Jewish men from Korets were sent to the Chelyabinsk labor camp, working at the tank plant.
Major General Isaac Moiseevich Zaltzman, Director Kirov Tank Plant, Chelyabinsk
Major General Isaac Moiseevich Zaltzman, Director Kirov Tank Plant, Chelyabinsk
Boruch (Buzia) Balaj remembered a parade down the streets of Chelyabinsk honoring the hero, Major-General Isaac Moiseevich Zaltzman, who was a Jew and the Director of the Kirov Plant, the largest tank production plant in the Soviet Union. Shouts of "Zaltzman, Zaltzman!" were heard everywhere.
Many Jews from Korets worked in the tank factory under the direction of Major-General Zaltzman.
For more information about Zaltzman, Chelyabinsk, the tank factory and labor camps:
Tankograd: The Formation of a Soviet Company Town: Cheliabinsk, 1900s-1950s, by Lennart Samuelson, 2011.
Review and description of Tankograd book [PDF, 2 pages]
A.V. Sushkov, The Case of the “Tank King”, Isaac Zaltsman, Yekaterinburg, 2016, 300 pages. [UKR: Сушков А. В. Дело «танкового короля» Исаака Зальцмана. — Екатеринбург: Изд-во УрО РАН, 2016. — 300 с.]
Chelyabinsk: A Place of Refuge
Chelyabinsk: A Place of Refuge
Of the Jews from Korets who were sent to Chelyabinsk, about 300-400 who survived went to Israel after the war.
By Moshe Neiterman, drawn from the Korets Yizkor Book, pp. 538-544, as cited on webpage of Korets Association of Israel.
Summary
Several hundred Jews from Korets were recruited into the Soviet Army in June 1941. Many were eventually sent to Chelyabinsk, Siberia, a major industrial center. They formed a Korets colony of workers for about 5 years. The draftees from Korets were divided into two principal work places... including: “The Special Construction Trust” (O.C.M.) 22 and Factory no. 8.” (Korets Yizkor Book). They lived in in tents, sleeping in bunk beds, and formed a kind of family. Toward the end of the war, the Korets residents made contact with the Korets organizations in America and Israel and received help from them. As Moshe Neiterman noted, “Five years in Tchelyavinsk left its mark on each one of us. Those years were decisive for the fate of all mankind. This time will never be erased from our memories.”
Glossary:
Chelyabinsk (Russian: Челя́бинск), a Russian city southeast of the Ural Mountains on the Miass River, a tributary of the Ural River. Located about 210 kilometers south of Yekaterinburg, the city is the capital of the surrounding region, Chelyabinsk Oblast. It is one of the industrial centers, the heaviest in Soviet Russia.
Ravochiya Battalions – Soviet labor battalions.
The Polish government in exile was headed by Władysław Sikorski (May 20, 1881 – July 4, 1943).
Baron – a certificate of confinement to the workplace issued to workers at Chelyabinsk by the military regime in the above workplaces and was signed by the work manager. Further to the above, there was a dispute between the Polish government in exile and the Soviet government over the citizenship of immigrants from Ukraine and Belarus.
06/22/1941
The German invasion of Soviet territory.
06/25/1941
Recruitment of Korets children into the Red Army.
Classification of Korets Jews as Western Zepadniks - immigrants from Ukraine and Belarus under Polish citizenship until September 17, 1939. This classification helped the Jews when the Soviet government decided not to include them in the fighting forces and they were sent to the rear to Chelyabinsk.
03/07/1941
Stalin issues an order for the complete evacuation of production facilities and manpower from the front to the rear. The first evacuation was to "Tashkent, the city of bread", an evacuation that gave hope to the Jews for better living conditions, because this city has a name that says "they sow twice." However, when they arrived at the place, they were in for a great disappointment, as famine prevailed. [There was] suffering, [and] people got dysentery and typhoid.
Korets members who died in these districts:
Work accident in a factory: Reuven Bernstein in Kokand, Uzbekistan
Hunger and disease: Father Rabin, Namangan and Otashi, Uzbekistan
Disappeared in a Soviet military hospital: N. Khanin (Red Army soldier), Ukraine
1941
Establishment of "Column No. 5", composed of Jews and Ukrainians in Chelyabinsk. Their residence was next to the Chelyabinsk Tank Factory.
Workplaces of the Kursk Jews in Chelyabinsk: Special Building Trust No. 22. (OCM), Factory number 8.
1942
Statement by V. Molotov on behalf of the Soviet government about the Nazi cruelty in the territories. The occupation of the civilian population in the towns of Barzana, Kostopol and the surrounding towns Korets.
1944
End of the dispute between the Polish government-in-exile and the Soviet government over the nationality of people from Ukraine and Belarus. The conclusion was: Jews and Poles, they have Polish citizenship. Ukrainians and Belarusians do not have Polish citizenship.
1944
PPZ "Union of Polish Patriots", which began its activities in this year. I (Moshe Naiterman) was elected chairman of the union at the tank factory where they worked. Most of the Jews are [from] Korets. The PPZ Union of Polish Patriots, published in its newspaper an article by Dr. Emil Sommerstein, a delegate to the Polish parliament, the Sejm, on the massacres in Rovno. And additional publications on the loss of Volhynian Jewry.
1944
Immediately after the liberation, I wrote to the municipality (Gorsovit) and asked to know about my son. My family and all the members of Korets did the same. The answers we received were in the same format: "Your family members were exiled by the Germans to an unknown destination."
1944-1945
A gathering of the Korets family in Chelyabinsk to reminisce about their father's home and talk about the loss of hope for a "Sabbath of brothers together."
Conversations in Hebrew, including a reading of Bialik's In the City of Killing.
Contact with Israel – Transfer of the list of Korets Jews who were in Chelyabinsk and survived the Holocaust to Mr. A. Singerman from the Korets Jewish Committee in Palestine.
Arrival of packages from Israel and America to Chelyabinsk, in accordance with the above lists.
January 1946
The repatriation of Polish nationals from Chelyabinsk begins.
May 1946
Dissolution of "Column No. 5", of the Jews of Korets in Chelyabinsk, most of whom are today (1960) in Israel. The period of stay in Chelyabinsk [was] 5 years, which left their mark on everyone who … experienced them, a period of time that will never be erased from our memories.
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