Saved by Stalin? Polish Jews in the Soviet Second World War

The German attack on Poland brought Central European Jews in unprecedented numbers into the Soviet orbit. This paper outlines the major trajectories of Jews from Poland in the Soviet Union's Second World War. One group traveled, equipped with Japanese exit visas, through the entire Soviet Union to Vladivostok and on to Japan. If they did not immediately emigrate elsewhere, they usually ended up in the Shanghai ghetto for the rest of the war. A second group was either deported or travelled voluntarily to the Soviet hinterland, later joined the nominally Polish Berling Army and returned with it to Poland at war's end. A third group instead exited the Soviet Union with the Anders Army via Iran in 1942, either moving on to Palestine or continuing the journey to join the Allied war effort in Italy at the end of the war. A fourth group left only after the war during "repatriation" to Poland, and a fifth group remained in the Soviet Union for good. This paper discusses these major trajectories and how this sojourn of Central European Jews through the Soviet Union, including Central Asia and Siberia change our view of World War II and Holocaust survival.