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Deported, Exiled, Saved. History and Memory of Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1940–1959) / Tagungsberichte Info Drucken PDF Deported, Exiled, Saved. History and Memory of Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1940–1959) Organisatoren European University Viadrina, Frankfurt an der Oder; Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw; Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw Ort Warsaw Land Poland Vom - Bis 10.10.2018 - 12.10.2018 Url der Konferenzwebsite Von Veronika Dyminska, Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt an der Oder The experience of Polish Jews during and immediately after World War II, whether deportation, evacuation or exile, was a life-changing period that they were forced to go through not on their own will. Nevertheless, in the perspective of many Jews, the exile is perceived as the possibility to escape the ongoing destruction of Jewish life under occupation. As it turned out, for some Polish Jews deportation by the Soviet People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) saved them from German persecution. About 250.000 Polish Jews survived World War II by deportation, evacuation, and/or flight to Siberia and Central Asia. After the war, the majority of them returned to Poland, before making their way to countries in Europe or overseas. However, the history of Polish Jews in the Soviet Union is complex and exceeds the frame of national history calling for a global perspective. An attempt to analyze it and find new approaches was done during the Global Education Outreach Program workshop. The main task of the meeting was to gather scholars from Poland, Germany, Israel, US, Canada, Australia, and Russia and provide them with the possibility of a professional discussion about recent research. The workshop was opened with the welcome addresses of the organizers. MARKUS NESSELRODT (Frankfurt an der Oder) stressed that the workshop continues the discussion on the Jewish experience in the Soviet Union during and after World War II, that began with a conference 30 years ago, organized by ANTONY POLONSKY (London / Warsaw) and Norman Davies.[1] KATHARINA FRIEDLA (Warsaw) introduced different archives and sources of the Jewish history from 1933 to present. She gave an overview of the most valuable collections worldwide and pointed out the importance of national archives in the former Soviet republics. The first panel focused on the Jewish experience in Soviet occupied Poland. In his presentation Markus Nesselrodt dealt with the topic of the flight of Jews to the Soviet territories from the German occupied zone. After the German invasion in September 1939, over two million Jews faced the choice between two evils, an estimated number of 300.000 of them decided to flee to the East. The main aspects that influenced the flight were family hierarchy, geography and proximity to the new demarcation line, time of the decision, knowledge of the Nazi German ideology and persecutions, and lack of choice after being expelled from Germany. Hence the decision to flee was often a combination of individual experience, knowledge, and chance. JANINA KARPENKINA (Moscow) gave insights into the processes of Sovietization of Jews in the Soviet occupied part of Belarus. Jews formed about 10 percent of the local population of the former Eastern Polish borderlands before the outbreak of the war. Thanks to the good level of education and high concentration in the cities but also due to Soviet tactics of stimulating ethnic conflict, Jews entered administration positions in the region. However, the situation changed dramatically in January 1940, when most locals were replaced by Belarussians coming from the Eastern regions of the country. MARTYNA RUSINIAK-KARWAT (Warsaw) described the story of the Bundists (Jewish socialists) who were deported to Siberia and Central Asia. Even though many activists of Bund and his youth division, Tsukunft, managed to flee from the German occupied zone of Poland to the East, they were soon arrested by NKVD as ‚counterrevolutionary elements‘ and sent mainly to Altai Krai. After 1942, they started to create illegal organizations in Kuybyshev and collected information about other Bundists and their families. They aimed initially to leave the Soviet Union with the Anders’s Army, although finally many decided to stay in Central Asia and returned to Poland only in 1946. RENATA PIĄTKOWSKA and PRZEMYSŁAW KANIECKI (both Warsaw) presented various sources from the collection of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. They suggested a visual history perspective introducing several items and documents. These sources, they argued, tell the history of particular persons and families and capture the moment of the flight or remain – sometimes the only memory of those Jews, who didn’t survive. The second panel concerned the co-existence of Polish and Polish-Jewish deportees in the Soviet Union. ELIYANA R. ADLER (State College, PA) concentrated particularly on the experiences of Polish-Jew...