4

The Soviet Interlude

Introduction

Where was this gray army decorated with red stars going? Was it bringing us assistance or final defeat? What was the meaning of all this?

ANNA GIMZEWSKA, Poland, September 1939¹

Anna’s uncertainty of the implications of the 1939 Soviet occupation echoes both contemporary feelings and the strange absence of this period from many Holocaust texts. Frequently, they ignore the period of Soviet occupation of large parts of the region from September 1939 to June 1941. One must understand Soviet actions and their effects on the areas of the East that would eventually become the graves of most Holocaust victims. Even today, this twenty-one-month period is etched into the landscape of the East: the eastern border of Poland remains the one negotiated between Hitler and Stalin in 1939, for example.

If it feels as if we are taking a detour, remember that the Holocaust took place predominantly on territory occupied by the Soviet Union from 1939–41, and that this occupation colored many aspects of the Nazi genocidal project there. We must first, then, explore the varied approaches the Soviet government under Stalin took to securing and controlling these new areas and the impact on both Jews and non-Jews. We must also identify the effects Soviet occupation would have on both the execution of anti-Jewish measures in the East and on the attitudes of the local population to their Jewish neighbors.

While both Stalin and Hitler ruled over incredibly murderous and repressive regimes, this chapter does not argue one was worse than the other or propose that Stalin’s policies brought about the Holocaust. They did not. However, seismic changes and upheaval caused by the Soviets help us to place the Holocaust in its proper historical context. The period of Soviet occupation (much of which was in Polish territory) had several important effects on the local populations, Jewish and non-Jewish. The Soviet state destroyed existing political systems and, often, the traditional social order. It also exacerbated ethnic tensions between various groups by privileging some and victimizing others. Jews often found themselves caught between both groups and unfairly blamed for the hardship of occupation. Finally, in places like Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic States, Soviet occupation fanned the flames of already powerful nationalist movements whose hatred for the regime and anyone associated with it burned ever brighter.

Friends with the Devil: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Collapse of Poland

The sinister news broke upon the world like an explosion.

WINSTON CHURCHILL²

On August 23, 1939, the Nazis and the Soviets stunned the world (and clearly Churchill) by announcing they had signed a non-aggression pact, agreeing to “refrain from any belligerent action, and any attack on each other, either severally or jointly with other powers.”³ Two days earlier, Stalin had said, “I hope that the German–Soviet non-aggression pact will mark a decided turn for the better in political relations between our countries.”⁴ Italian Foreign Minister Ciano wrote with foreboding in his diary: “the European situation is upset” and American newsman William Shirer “had the feeling that war is now inevitable.”⁵ This treaty was shocking for several reasons. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had been ideological bitter enemies. The bulk of Nazi propaganda for years vilified the “Bolshevist menace” in the East as an existential threat to Western civilization that must be defeated. Conversely, Soviet propagandists painted the Nazis and fascism as the natural expression of the capitalist system as predicted by Marx and other Communist theorists, bent on the enslavement of the working class and war mongering. And yet now these two seemingly implacable enemies declared their “friendship?” The second reason the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (named after the Soviet and Nazi foreign ministers, respectively) came as such a surprise to the West was that the USSR itself had proposed an alliance with Britain and France in April 1939 and was in negotiations toward that end.⁶

How do we understand this 180-degree turn in diplomacy? First, we must (briefly) look at the strategic picture for both Germany and the Soviet Union. The Nazi viewpoint was relatively simple. Because Hitler intended to invade Poland or obtain a beneficial arrangement with it, he needed to avoid a two-front war with Britain and France on one side and the Soviet Union on the other. Thus, a non-aggression pact taking the USSR out of the picture would allow Hitler to invade Poland without interference. Stalin’s motivations were based on a combination of ideological and realistic understandings of the situation. He, too, recognized that Hitler would invade Poland. He also correctly assumed that this would cause a larger European war, given that Britain and France had pledged to support Poland. Stalin hoped this European war between Germany and France/Britain would be long and costly, leaving the capitalist countries of the West weakened and ripe for a communist revolution and/or unable to stop his own territorial ambitions. Second, Stalin viewed the pact pragmatically as a way to buy time to improve and build up his military.

Outwardly, the treaty simply pledged non-aggression and friendship, but the meat of the agreement, the offerings which truly brought these two enemies together, were the secret “Supplementary Protocols” that divided Poland and the Baltic States between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union “in the event of a territorial and political restructuring of the regions that are part of the Polish state.”⁷ This “restructuring” meant war, and the two nations were laying out their claims for “spheres of interest” prior to that war taking place. The terms of the secret protocols divided Poland roughly in half along the San, Narew, and Vistula rivers. Through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviets stood to acquire 201,000 square kilometers and 13.2 million people (of whom about 5 million were Poles).⁸ Lucrative economic arrangements accompanied the agreement. All that was required was war. Hitler happily obliged.

In the early hours of September 1, 1939, the Germans attacked Poland. The fortuitous (and conveniently timed) war began and the secret protocols were placed into effect, with both sides aligning their forces in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact whose ink was barely dry. Almost immediately, the two invaders amended their territorial deal. The Germans quickly agreed to extend the Soviet sphere of influence to include Lithuania and the Baltic States while the Soviets granted Germany more territory in central Poland. In 1940, the Soviets would annex Bessarabia and Bukovina from Romania and solidify their hold on the Baltic States and Western Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. These land grabs from Romania and Hungary would later become important in those countries’ decisions to align with the Nazis (even though the Germans themselves had pressured them to submit to Soviet demands.)

Liberation, Conquest, and Uncertainty: The Red Army Marches In

We come not as conquerors but as liberators of our brother Belorussians and Ukrainians and the workers of Poland.

Order No. 005 of the Military Council of the Belorussian Front to the Troops on the Goals of the Red Army’s Entry into Western Belorussia, September 16, 1939⁹

The Soviets (like the Germans) had never truly recognized Poland’s right to exist and were very happy to take control of it, not least as a buffer between themselves and the increasingly powerful Nazi state. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov happily announced the demise of “this ugly offspring of the Versailles treaty” in an address on October 31, 1939.¹⁰ Yet, to the world and their new populations, the Soviets justified their actions by portraying themselves as helping their fellow communists—as the order above indicates. The Soviet Union had a duty to intercede and protect the workers and national minorities. The Polish ambassador in Moscow was informed that “the Soviet government intends to take all measures to liberate the Polish people from the disastrous war into which they have been dragged by their unwise leaders and to give them the opportunity to live a peaceful life.”¹¹ Red Army soldiers were told that “the Polish landowners and capitalists have enslaved the working people of Western Belorussia and Western Ukraine.”¹² Declaring that the Polish state ceased to exist conveniently relieved the USSR of any lingering duties it might have had to Poland under previous treaties.

Despite its claims of liberation and protection, the Red Army received quite different responses to its arrival that often reflected the treatment different groups had received under the Polish government. Many villages gave Red Army troops the traditional welcome offering of bread and salt, but that does not mean everyone greeted occupation in the same way. While we can make some generalizations about the responses of these groups to the Soviet invasion, we must also remember that each individual response arose from a complex mixture of experience, ethnicity, and ideology. Yet, these reactions as a whole would have important and long-lasting repercussions (particularly for Jews) when these territories changed hands yet again in 1941. Indeed, the Soviet occupation would at least partially shape the experience of both victims and local collaborators in the coming Nazi storm.

The Poles viewed the invasion as a crime and a devastating defeat. Poland was a nation defined by Polish ethnicity and staunch Catholicism, and the Communist system promised to destroy that. Indeed, the Soviet regime viewed Poles as the least trustworthy of the national groups in Eastern Europe precisely because of their organization and sense of nationalism. During Stalin’s Great Terror in the late 1930s, a Communist party official suggested that national minorities (such as Poles) “should be forced to their knees and shot like mad dogs.”¹³ Thus, Poles throughout the Soviet zone (including Belarus and Western Ukraine) viewed the invasion with deep apprehension and disgust. One Polish citizen stated unequivocally that “the Russians were barbarians, rabble, Asians, another world. When the Bolsheviks entered Brzezany, terrible times started for us Poles. They arrived as our diehard enemies.”¹⁴ In areas such as Galicia in Eastern Poland, Poles were especially wary for, under the Austrian empire, they had enjoyed cultural and political superiority despite their minority status and had repressed Ukrainian influence and culture. Polish fears of Soviet retribution would prove to be well justified.

Likewise, ethnic Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians had much the same reaction as the Poles when the Soviets annexed their territories. They, too, had a well-established sense of nationalist identity steeped in ethnicity and religion. Nationalist parties here, as in Poland, also often included antisemitic political platforms. At the end of World War I, these nationalities had fought hard against the Soviets for their independence. Now, ten years later, they watched as the Soviet monolith trampled their newfound freedom. They established resistance organizations and suffered under the Communist occupation. In fact, even leftist organizations including the Communist Party of Lithuania were outlawed, not least because they actively opposed the Soviet occupation.

Ukrainians had a slightly more complex reaction to the arrival of the Soviets in Western Poland and what would become Western Belarus. Eastern Ukraine, of course, had been a territory of the Soviet Union and had suffered through what can only be described as a genocidal, partially man-made famine carried out by Stalin’s government in 1932–3, which killed at least 2 million people. This did not endear Ukrainians to Soviet power. Thus, Ukrainian nationalism was particularly strong. Yet, in some areas of Eastern Poland like the large city of Lvov, Ukrainians were happy to see what they saw as Polish domination overthrown. Perhaps too optimistically, they hoped that Ukrainians might receive some greater autonomy under Soviet control. Some greeted the arriving Red Army with the yellow and blue colors of Ukraine until the first Soviet official they encountered told them to “put away their ‘rags’ and to put up instead a red banner.”¹⁵ Recognizing the Soviets were no friends, other Ukrainian nationalists attacked the Red Army arriving in Lvov and Chodorow . . . with little effect.¹⁶ Ukrainians would find Soviet occupation policies toward them to be complex and, at times, contradictory.

The Jewish reaction (both actual and perceived) to the Soviet occupation of Poland and the Baltic States was the most complex and also the most important of all the national minorities in forming a background for the Holocaust to follow. First, we must distinguish between those happy to see Soviets instead of Germans for obvious reasons and those Jews who were politically communist. For the former, joy at Soviet arrival likely was short-lived, though they still saw them as better than Germans. Politically, Jews found themselves in an impossible situation in most places in Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic. As we have seen, Jews were precluded from participating in most parties. Regardless, both Poles and Ukrainians sought Jewish support. Attempting to avoid taking sides, most Jewish leaders remained neutral . . . and were condemned by both sides.

It follows, then, that when the Soviets arrived, there were significant numbers of Jews who were happy to see them. In one small town, the Red Army “was welcomed by friendly crowds composed mainly of young Jews and Ukrainians.”¹⁷ Yet their motives were complex. Some were, indeed, ideologically communist. Others “particularly the young and the educated, harbored a grudge against the Polish state because of its discriminatory policies in education and employment.”¹⁸ Some took a small amount of pleasure in the turn of events on the Poles, turning a pre-war antisemitic sentiment against them: ““You wanted Poland without Jews,” they joked, “so now you have Jews without Poland.”¹⁹ Indeed, there was a significant influx of Jews from Poland into the Soviet zone. As Jewish diarist Chaim Kaplan wrote from Warsaw in November 1939, “There is no present and no future for young Jews. They escape for their lives.”²⁰ Yet even Communist Jews were quickly disappointed with their “liberators.” As one recalled, “First contacts with the Russians . . . struck us with something strange and unpleasant. We thought that every soldier was a Communist and therefore it was also obvious to us that each must be happy . . . I noticed that they were preoccupied with worldly goods, and we were waiting for ideals.”²¹ Still others were refugees fleeing the Nazi occupation of western Poland; knowing that the Germans were murdering Jews there. One refugee wrote “Who cared about Communism? Who paid any attention to theoretical problems of national economy, when one faced an immediate danger to life?”²² In Bessarabia (formerly part of Romania), a Jewish Red Army officer recalled that “we found all the sidewalks on the main street . . . filled with Jews. They greeted us with delight, applauded as we passed and showered us with wreaths of flowers.”²³

We must, however, recall that most Jews belonged to traditionally conservative Orthodox communities and had no more reason to welcome an atheistic, socially disruptive state than their devout Polish or Lithuanian counterparts had. A society devoid of religion and lacking traditional Jewish communal leadership did not appeal to observant Jews. Regardless, from the beginning, the popular image in the minds of non-Jews was of Jews welcoming and supporting the oppressive Soviet regime despite the fact that in Poland, for example, only between five and seven percent of the Jewish population supported communism before the war.²⁴ This misconception blended easily with the antisemitic Judeo-Bolshevist myth to greatly heighten tension in Soviet occupied territories, as we will see. Many non-Jews could not easily separate the different reasons that that Jews might welcome Soviet control, they saw only treason.

The Soviets themselves encouraged some ethnic violence from the beginning, as they entered the occupied territories. During the military advance, the Soviets dropped leaflets encouraging Ukrainians and Belorussians to rob and murder Poles.²⁵ One Polish citizen, a child at the time, recalled the violence between Polish and Ukrainian nationalist groups that immediately followed the Soviet invasion:

One day, the principal of the local Polish school, who headed the Narajow branch of the Polish Riflemen’s Association [a Polish paramilitary organization], grabbed a machine gun and started shooting at a group of Ukrainians from a second-floor window of the school building.²⁶

As one scholar has noted, “slogans disseminated by the entering Soviets encouraged the local population to rectify the wrongs it had suffered during twenty years of Polish rule”; these exhortations to violence fell on “eager ears.” A Polish survivor in Eastern Poland remembered that “Ukrainian villages assaulted Polish settlements, such as our hamlet . . . for example. The landowner was tied to a pole, two strips of skin peeled off and the wound covered with salt, and he was left alive to watch the execution of his family.”²⁷ Such violence was not only traumatic for the local populations, but also appeared to reinforce the Soviet official claim that it was intervening in Poland to protect so-called “national minorities.” Another historian concluded that “Ukrainian peasants took revenge on Polish estate owners and Polish settlers for past humiliations and state violence. Political units of the Red Army exploited social and ethnic conflict, encouraging Ukrainian peasants and the lower stratum of the urban population to form village committees and a militia and to destroy the old social and political structures ‘from below.’“²⁸ In Lithuania in 1940, the Soviet-controlled newspaper, Darbo Lietuva, demanded that the population be watchful for “enemies of the people.”²⁹ Jews were not spared this violence. One Jewish resident remembered a close call during the invasion, when “the Ukrainians had a list of fifty Jews who they wanted to get. We were lucky. The Russians came that night.”³⁰ The Soviet occupation would bring both violence and opportunity.

Revolution from Abroad? Soviet Occupation Policy

We will not aim at sovietizing them . . . There will come a time when they will do this themselves.

JOSEPH STALIN, October 25, 1939³¹

Stalin believed his newly occupied territories would one day be important as a first line of defense against a German attack. He also wanted to eventually make them active members of the Soviet Union, but with the appearance of homegrown initiative, hence the statement above. He sought then to carry out a “revolution from abroad,” bringing the Soviet system to the newly occupied territories and binding them tightly to the state. Therefore, Soviet occupation policy reached into all aspects of life: political, economic, cultural, religious, and social.

The first order of business was to solidify political control of the newly acquired territories. Borders were sealed and population movement restricted. The Soviets took over most directly at first by removing all pre-war leadership that they viewed as potentially disloyal. This usually meant all nationalist leadership; in Poland, it meant most Poles were removed from their positions. The Soviet authorities and the secret police (NKVD) intentionally targeted intelligentsia and any potential leadership for elimination. Very often, they were often deported deep into the Soviet Union, which we will discuss later. Even among prisoners of war, the Soviets searched for these individuals as an NKVD memorandum instructed in 1939. Specifically, “professors, journalists, physicians, artists . . . who served in the Polish Army as officers, as well as intelligence agents, counterintelligence agents, gendarmes, police, provocateurs, prominent military and state officials, secret agents of the police and the counterintelligence, active figures in anti-Soviet political parties and organizations, landowners, and princes” were to be separated and detained.³²

Into this vacuum, the Soviets placed individuals they considered more trustworthy. Often, these were local communists, political prisoners, and minority ethnicities including Jews. This replacement of local leaders allowed the Soviets to begin the “Sovietization” of the state that Stalin had mentioned. As the situation stabilized, however, vetted Soviet officials replaced many of these new appointments. At the national level, however, the Soviets wished to appear less heavy-handed. They therefore called for national elections that would validate their takeover. In Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, these elections were held in 1939, but were not democratic. They offered only Soviet candidates, were held in public, and required high voter turnout. In Lvov, residents of a particular neighborhood or building were actually marched together to the polling station to vote.³³ Not surprisingly, once elected, these national assemblies asked to be taken into the Soviet Union. One of those drumming up the vote in Ukraine was future premier, Nikita Kruschev. The Supreme Soviet granted these “requests” on November 1–2, 1939.³⁴ Likewise in Lithuania, the puppet People’s Diet proclaimed in July 1940 that “ . . . expressing the unanimous will of the toiling people . . . the Soviet system shall be introduced in Lithuania.”³⁵

For local populations, however, the Soviet presence offered little cause for celebration. The new government began with a campaign to issue Soviet passports to its new citizens. While this registration was optional, refusal to do so resulted in discrimination in housing and employment and possible deportation.³⁶ The registration served two other more sinister purposes than inclusion in the great Soviet Union. First, it allowed the Red Army to conscript 150,000 of its new citizens.³⁷ Second, the detailed information collected in this process could easily be used to identify potential enemies of the state for deportation; failure to register served the same purpose.

Once some semblance of political control had been established, the Soviets began the all-important process of bringing the communist economic system to their new holdings. In accordance with communist doctrine, the government seized large private enterprises in both manufacturing and retail and began instituting strict controls. The unsurprising effect was massive economic turmoil and shortages. As one example, of the 8,500 small shops in Lvov, 6,400 sold out of all their merchandise and, unable to replenish their supplies, closed.³⁸ In Lithuania by June 1941, only one-tenth of private shops remained in the hands of their original owners; all large factories employing more than twenty people had already been seized.³⁹ The Soviet system of quotas and economic shock work was introduced to a population unused to such harsh measures. Professionals such as doctors and lawyers were forced to work for the state or in state-run institutions.

For those living in the countryside, the situation was not much better. Soon, the Soviets instituted collectivization (where all land was communally owned and worked). This fundamentally and violently altered rural and peasant life, which had been centered around land ownership. Land and livestock were confiscated to create these collective farms whose harvests were then to be distributed to the people. These kolkhozes or collective farms were created in both occupied Poland and the Baltic States. Fortunately for many, the Soviets did not have enough time to fully implement collectivization, but it still served as a major and traumatic change accompanying Soviet governance.

In reengineering their new territories, the Soviets sought to change more than the political and economic systems: they aimed to create Soviet citizens. This meant removing any vestiges of the former regimes. In Lithuania, “The symbols of independent Lithuania—the flag, the national hymn, the knight on horseback—were now illegal.”⁴⁰ In Poland, Soviet authorities “took medallions with images of saints off children’s necks and gave them ones with Stalin’s picture instead.”⁴¹ Street names were changed. The alphabet was changed from Latin to Cyrillic. Citizens were instructed in communist theory and were taught to sing the communist anthem. Local Soviet officials forced them to attend propaganda sessions designed to introduce them to the Soviet way of life. These measures aimed to reeducate the people in the new way of doing and thinking. The removal and replacement of physical reminders of the past began this process. Other cultural activities such as theater, film, music, and writing were curtailed or brought in line with communist policies. Unapproved newspapers were censored or shuttered. Soviet-style art replaced national artists.

Nowhere was the “revolution from abroad” more apparent than in education. Children were very important to Soviet authorities and sweeping changes appeared in the school system. The Soviets abolished private schools (and religious schools). In Poland, one of the goals of this and other cultural changes was “de-polonization,” an attempt to erase Polish history and culture, which was deemed subversive. As a result, teachers were expected to teach in Ukrainian or Belarussian (or Russian in other places). They were required to learn new Soviet curricula and Marxist-Leninist thought.⁴² Non-Polish parents could choose the language of instruction for their children, a perk that was not unappreciated. However, within the schools, children were also made to be part of the Soviet system of sowing distrust in the local population: they were encouraged to inform on their parents and others who may be “class enemies.” In this way, even the youngest in the new territories could be enlisted in Soviet repression.

Though eventually interrupted by the German invasion in 1941, the Soviets began to implement rather systematically the systems they used in their own territories. They sought to make these new lands extensions of the Soviet state, founded on Marxist communist ideals, members of the Soviet command economy, and with ethnic and social distinctions erased. On this last point, the Soviet state seemed willing at least initially to privilege certain groups to certain extents, but the end goal remained a classless, nationless Soviet state, by either relatively benign or more severe methods.

Mixed Feelings: Jews under Soviet Occupation

The unexpected events were met by the Jewish population with mixed feelings. First of all there was a sense of relief, we were spared the agonies of Hitlerism . . . The truth is that the communist regime also presented its own dangers, but these were of a different kind.

Jewish resident, Tarnopol (Ukraine), 1939⁴³

For Jews in the Soviet occupied territories, governmental change brought a complex mix of positive and negative experiences, as noted by our witness in Tarnopol. Ironically, for example, a large number of Jews survived the Holocaust by being forcibly deported from their homes by the Soviets from 1939–41. Though antisemitism certainly existed, the Soviet Union distinguished itself as being one of the only places where antisemitism was officially condemned and actively combated. Of course, this freedom often coincided with a loss of Jewish identity and a strong pressure to assimilate into secular Soviet society. In any case, the relative freedom of opportunity in the Soviet Union meant that many Soviet Jews rose to positions in the professions, government, academia, and the police that were out of reach elsewhere in Europe. In 1927, for example, 23,000 Jewish students attended Soviet universities; this made up 14.3 percent of the student body even though Jews represented only 1.8 percent of the Soviet population.⁴⁴

Some of this opportunity extended to the newly occupied territories. Positions previously forbidden for Jews became available. For example, a Jew named Poldek from the small town of Brzezany had studied medicine in Vienna but returned home after Austria was incorporated into Nazi Germany in 1938. He was unable to find work in Poland. However, after the Soviet invasion, Poldek was admitted to the medical school at Lvov University and given a scholarship. He remembered, “They didn’t care whether I was a Jew or anything else. They gave me a chance to finish my studies.”⁴⁵ Similar stories of economic and social advancement (or at least equality) could be seen throughout the new Soviet territories. Unfortunately, as Jews became more prominent, they also became more vulnerable to anger from non-Jews.

Culturally, the Soviet occupation was also a mixed bag. All Jewish newspapers in Poland were banned, replaced by the Bialystoker Stern (Star of Bialystok), which was little more than a mouthpiece for Soviet propaganda and provided no reporting on the plight of Jews in the German zone of occupation.⁴⁶ The existing Jewish education system of Hebrew schools was completely destroyed. Religious education was driven underground. The Soviets also declared war on the Hebrew language itself. It was viewed variously as a bourgeois, nationalist, or a religious language and, thus, antithetical to Soviet ideology, which sought to make class the only distinction between peoples. On the other hand, the Soviets elevated Yiddish from a lower, more utilitarian status to that of a preferred language. In Soviet eyes, Yiddish was a proletarian language. Thus, somewhat ironically, Yiddish writing, theater, and culture could be expressed in ways they were not before.

On the religious front, Jews received similar treatment to their Christian counterparts. As mentioned, religious schools were shut down. Synagogues, too, were very often shuttered and repurposed by the Soviets. They became meeting halls, barns, warehouses, movie theaters. Training for rabbis and religious leaders was officially stopped. Naturally, the Soviet state could not be omnipresent and so many of these changes were more evident in larger towns and cities. Often, churches and synagogues were forced to pay a tax to the Soviets. These anti-religious policies did not destroy Jewish religious life, but they did force it underground or out of public view. Families still observed religious rituals and even prayer services, but often these could only take place in private homes.

Jewish political organizations were treated in the same manner as those of their non-Jewish neighbors. The Jewish communist party, the Bund, was dissolved and merged with the existing party apparatus. The Soviet authorities also attacked Zionism, which they saw as a Jewish nationalist organization with international ties and a threat to the state. A KGB report claimed that “the Jewish bourgeoisie and intelligentsia in Poland were influenced by the Zionist- Revisionist party—a Jewish fascist organization.”⁴⁷ Another report in June 1941 claimed that “All the Jewish nationalist organizations used all means available to sabotage the Soviet regime. By maintaining close ties with the American JDC [Joint Distribution Committee] . . . they collected intelligence information which they passed on to the Americans. British Intelligence, too, made frequent use of the Zionists.”⁴⁸ Here, the endemic paranoia in the Soviet system worked to dismantle a previously powerful Jewish organization. Anti-Zionist measures would have some effect in weakening Jewish resistance during the Holocaust as Zionist leaders were deported or killed. Even the unofficial kehila system of self-help that provided a social safety net for Jewish communities was dismantled or driven underground, hampering efforts to help those under stress from the Soviet “reforms.”

Economically, the Jews fared little better (and often worse) than non-Jews. While they had a much smaller stake in land and so were insulated from collectivization, the basis for their economic lives was shattered. For merchants and factory and department store owners alike, the Soviet system was a wrecking ball. Wealthy Jews, viewed as bourgeois “class enemies,” lost most of their businesses along with their Gentile countrymen. In Lvov, for example, Leon Wells’ father, who had owned an apartment building was fortunate to keep a job as the caretaker for his own building, which become nationalized by the Soviet state.⁴⁹ Even for small shopkeepers (many of whom were Jewish) the Soviet occupation was destructive. They quickly ran out of goods and were driven out of business. In Lithuania, Jews owned 83 percent of commercial firms.⁵⁰ In factories, wages did not increase but workers were now subjected the often brutal and unrealistic quota system of the Soviet Five Year Plan. Fortunate Jews were allowed to remain as superintendents in their own factories, working under Soviet leadership.

Under Soviet occupation, as in the Soviet Union itself, Jews faced a complex landscape of some positive and many negative developments. On the positive front, the egalitarian Soviet system offered Jews opportunities politically and professionally that they had never had access to. Similarly, the relatively small number of Jews who had a history of communist activity could realize significant political mobility under the watchful eyes of the Soviet state. However, the price for these reforms was too much for many Jews to bear. The destruction of their spiritual communities and communal life was traumatic and certainly unwelcome. The Soviets offered economic, social, and political advancement at the price of assimilation and secularism. Most Jews refused this deal. For many, this evoked a similar program of assimilation that they had already experienced under their national governments: assimilate or leave.

Soviet Repression: Detention, Deportation, and Death

They asked about my wedding ring, which I . . .

Last diary entry by Polish officer ADAM SOLSKI before his execution in the Katyn Forest⁵¹

The third postcard was written in early March. It came at the same time as a returned parcel with photos that my Mom had sent. We were upset by this, but my Mom thought that he must have been transferred somewhere.

Remembrances of the daughter of Katyń victim Jewish Second Lieutenant MIECZYSŁAW JULIAN PRONER⁵²

Some of the measures taken by the Soviets were far more extreme than cultural change. Perhaps the most extreme was the murder of “state enemies” as evidenced by the above remembrances from the Katyń massacre of Poles. Shortly after arrival, Soviet authorities carried out brutal repression against perceived enemies across Eastern Europe: imprisonment, deportation, and murder. This, too, was an import of Soviet policy under Josef Stalin. These policies had been carried out for years in the USSR and were relatively easy to bring to the new territories shortly after occupation. The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs or NKVD was pivotal in carrying out Soviet repression. This organization is best known as the secret police that would also operate in Stalin’s new lands. The Soviets already knew the kinds of people who were likely to be “class enemies:” large landowners, the wealthy, large commercial owners, intelligentsia, nationalists (and political activists of all stripes—such as Zionists and even local communists), and existing government officials and elites, including local political and religious leaders. Stalin recognized that successful implementation of “sovietization” and “depolonization” required the elimination of any individuals who could organize resistance. Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski relayed a message to the Polish Government in exile in London from Lvov about the Soviet security forces. It was an insightful analysis. A law professor told Karski:

There is one thing you must understand and tell the men in Warsaw. Conditions here are very different, indeed. For one thing, the Gestapo and GPU [Soviet Secret Police] are two entirely different organisations. The men of the Russian secret police are more clever and better trained. Their police methods are superior. They are less crude, more scientific and systematic.⁵³

Soviet repression began almost immediately after Soviet occupation in Poland and the Baltic States. Stalin needed to turn these nations into loyal members of the Soviet Union as soon as possible to build his buffer against future Nazi aggression. In 21 months in eastern Poland, the Soviets arrested and deported 109,400 Polish citizens and sentenced 8,513 to death.⁵⁴

This drastic demographic engineering was founded on the removal of potential “enemies of the state,” accomplished by arrest, deportation, and murder. “Enemies” was a broad category. A Jewish survivor characterized the process saying, “The arrested people were chiefly police officials and people who were known to have carried out anti-Soviet activity before the occupation or after. Most of the arrested belonged, of course, to the well-to-do classes of the town, employers and leading officials.”⁵⁵ One witness in Bialystok recalled, for example:

On the first day they arrested the town’s mayor, Seweryn Nowakowski, the deputy mayor, K. Piotrowski, who died in jail two months later, the chief judge of the district, Ostruszko, the chief prosecutor, as well as all judges and deputy prosecutors, court clerks, employees of the voivodeship office, police functionaries, officers, etc. On the next day the following were arrested: the party leadership ‘of the SN [National Democratic party], the NPR [National Workers’ party], the OZN [Camp of National Unity], the Bund [Jewish Socialist party], and other parties. Then it was the turn of politically and socially prominent citizens, teachers, priests, capitalists, merchants, upperclassmen from high schools, etc.⁵⁶

A Soviet tribunal found a Polish POW guilty as a class enemy for “being in the former Polish state from 1936 to 1939, [serving] in the police . . . , where he conducted an active struggle against the revolutionary movement.”⁵⁷ If he was guilty of anything, it was arresting communists in the course of his duties as a Polish policeman. Nationalist movements were also heavily targeted. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) had already been active under the Polish government in advocating an independent Ukraine. Naturally, this movement directly threatened Soviet rule. The NKVD ruthlessly pursued and arrested or executed its members. Those who survived fled west where they found sympathetic ears in Nazi Germany. Even leaders and members of the Jewish Socialist Zionist Youth Organization, Hashomer Hatzair, were targeted.

The Soviets relied on a combination of investigations, interrogations, and denunciations to find their targets. This offered the local population the opportunity to both turn in “real” class enemies, but also to settle personal grudges that had no political motive whatsoever. This created a climate of suspicion and fear that divided society even further and, thus, served Soviet needs quite well. It would also serve Nazi needs when directed in another direction.

In the territories they occupied, the Soviet secret police apparatus often found prison facilities lacking for the massive influx of political prisoners they arrested and so established ad hoc prisons in local buildings. Soviet occupiers encouraged local populations to “unmask” and hand over potential enemies.⁵⁸ Prisons filled to the point of extreme overcrowding. One prisoner in Lvov recalled that “I was frightened by the prisoners’ faces and by their looks” and that “I couldn’t tell the difference between 40-year-old and 70-year-old men.”⁵⁹ Similar experiences were common throughout the newly acquired Soviet territories.

The next step for many was deportation. The Soviets continued the trend of using population displacement as a solution for opposition. From the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1917, they had sent hundreds of thousands to GULAGs (Soviet prison camps) or simply to settlements in the desolate Soviet hinterlands. They even created a supposedly autonomous Jewish province called Birobidzhan east of China. Conditions in the GULAGs and in settlements in Central Russia and Siberia were brutal and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands through starvation, exposure, disease, and mistreatment. Yet, deportation did not affect just the alleged “class enemies.” Whole families were deported. It also caused great fear and angst among the population; a Polish woman recalled that “A Polish girl from Kuropatniki was in my class, and one day she just didn’t come to school. Their whole family was deported to Siberia.”⁶⁰ The NKVD or other Soviet authorities arrived, often at night, giving the family a short time to pack. Then, they were taken by truck to a train station and literally disappeared overnight. Journeys in these freight cars could take several weeks to reach their destinations.

From 1939–41, the Soviets carried out a series of four distinct deportations in eastern Poland (western Ukraine and western Belarus), below:

TABLE 2Deportations of individuals from formerly Polish territory.

Date	Composition	Estimates from Polish Embassy in USSR (wartime)	Estimates from Documents of Soviet Convoys	NKVD Data
I- Feb 1940	Civil servants, local government officials, judges, members of the police force, forest workers, settlers, and small farmers-Polish, Ukrainian, and Belorussian	220,000	139,000–141,000	140,000–141,000
II- Apr 1940	The families of persons previously arrested, the families of those who had escaped abroad or were missing, tradesmen (mostly Jews), farm laborers from confiscated estates, and more small farmers of the three nationalities	320,000	61,000	61,000
III- Jun–Jul 1940	Practically all Polish citizens who in September 1939 had, in thousands, sought refuge in eastern Poland from the ruthless Nazi forces which were then invading Poland from the west; small merchants (a great many of them Jews), doctors, engineers, lawyers, journalists, artists, university professors, teachers, etc.	240,000	76,000	78,000–79,000
IV- May–Jun 1941	All belonging to the categories enumerated above and who had so far evaded deportation; children from summer camps and orphanages.	220,000	34,000–41,000	37,000–42,000
TOTAL		980,000	309,000–318,000	316,000–323,000

Source: Dates and Numbers from Wróbel, “Class War or Ethnic Cleansing?” 27. General description of deportees from Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia, p. 197.

These deportations terrorized local populations. As one can see above, often refugees were included in deportations, the majority of whom were Jews fleeing the Nazis. In a twist of cruel irony, these Soviet deportations often saved the lives of Jews who would have fallen into Nazi hands. Jews constituted 84 percent of the third deportation.⁶¹ A Jewish girl from Eastern Poland recalled that her family escaped the Soviet roundup which was “very bad luck because we could have survived in Siberia. Many of our friends and relatives who were taken there survived—in very bad circumstances, true—but they survived.”⁶² For Jacob Pesate in Romania, however, opting for flight to the Soviets was immediately lifesaving; he narrowly avoided pogroms by the fascist Romanian Iron Guard on the train and “was among those who received the Red Army with flowers in Czernowitz.”⁶³ Overall numbers of those deported are not altogether clear; however, it is likely that the number from former Polish territories is between 500,000 and 1,000,000. This does not include ongoing individual deportations or deportations the Baltic States.

Again, Jews were placed in a difficult position. Many families were divided between those who had fled to the Soviet zone and those who remained in German-occupied Poland. The former were often reluctant to take a Soviet passport for fear that they would be unable to return to relatives in the West. This often targeted them for deportation. In the spring of 1940, a German repatriation commission arrived in Soviet Poland to sign up volunteers to return to the German zone. It is likely that the Nazis were seeking ethnic Germans to help settle occupied Poland. However, there were many Poles and Jews who wanted to return, either to reunite with family or to escape Soviet repression. However, the Germans soon announced that the limit had been reached and no one else could cross over.⁶⁴ The Soviets now had a list of people that they clearly viewed as disloyal and potential enemies. They added them to the June deportation list. Some, like Chaim Hades in Brzesc, had second thoughts and were lucky. He describes the German registration, “I stood long hours in line and I finally got the authorization card for departure, which was considered at the time a pot of luck. A German officer turned to a crowd of standing Jews and asked: ‘Jews, where are you going? Don’t you realize that we will kill you?’”⁶⁵ He chose not to take the train to Łodz´.

Deportations also took place in the other occupied Soviet territories, though perhaps less systematically. In Lithuania, Jewish deportees disproportionately outnumbered non-Jews proportionally by three to one. On the night of June 13–14, 1940, 100,000 people were deported from the Baltic States to locations deep within the Soviet Union.⁶⁶ 35,000 Lithuanians were deported in the last week of the occupation.⁶⁷ Among those deported by the Soviets, 6,000 were Latvian, 500 Estonian, and 7,000 Lithuanian Jews.⁶⁸ Ten days before the German invasion, mass deportations also took place in the territory seized from Romania.⁶⁹

Executions accompanied mass arrests throughout the Soviet occupied territory. Many of these occurred in NKVD prisons or at specific shooting sites. Some were large and others small. A prisoner in Lvov described the daily horror of living in a working execution prison: “Every night they call out some of the condemned: some of them are given hard labour for life, others are taken into the cellars where the executioners carry out the death sentence with a shot in the back of the skull. If you stay in the death cell for a month it gives you hope that your sentence will be changed.”⁷⁰

The most infamous of Soviet executions was the mass murder of Polish prisoners of war taken by the Red Army during the 1939 invasion. These POWs were protected by the 1907 Hague Convention to which Russia was a signatory, but not the Soviet Union. A large number of the officers from this POW group were interned at three main camps in the Soviet Union as well as in several smaller camps. These Polish officers were not just military men; many were reservists and held important positions in Poland’s elite classes. The NKVD recognized the dual threat these individuals posed to its new territories, as can be seen in this memo to the commander of the Putivl camp:

As a supplement to No. 14028, we clarify that professors, journalists, physicians, artists, and other specialists being detained in the Putivl camp, who served in the Polish Army as officers, as well as intelligence agents, counterintelligence agents, gendarmes, police, provocateurs, prominent military and state officials, secret agents of the police and the counterintelligence, active figures in anti-Soviet political parties and organizations, landowners, and princes . . . that are discovered among the specialists are subject to detainment in the camp.⁷¹

Soviet authorities clearly targeted political and social elites of Poland and those most likely to actively resist the state. NKVD officials removed priests, pastors, and rabbis from the POW camps on Christmas Eve 1939.⁷² They were never seen again. This was an ominous hint of what was to come as similar selections took place throughout the Polish POW camps. The NKVD also received permission to arrest all former Polish officers who may have returned to their pre-war occupations as civilians, including retired senior officers. Finally, convinced of the threat posed by these elites, Lavrenty Beria (chief of the NKVD) directly proposed their elimination. He wrote that, as these men (and one woman) were “all sworn enemies of Soviet power, filled with hatred for the Soviet system of government,” the Soviets should “apply to them the supreme punishment, [execution by] shooting . . . [and] Examine [these] cases without calling in the arrested men and without presenting [them with] the charges, the decision about the end of the investigation, or the document of indictment . . .”⁷³ The Soviet Politburo accepted this proposal on March 5, 1940, and a mass killing operation swung into motion. 97 percent of those “examined” were marked for death.

Beginning in April 1940, the NKVD loaded the first group of Polish prisoners of war onto trucks. The prisoners expected that they were being sent home. Instead, the trains stopped at a small rail station in the forest of Katyń, near Smolensk. Descending the stairs into a small cell in an NKVD building, the men were forced to their knees and shot by NKVD officers. Their bodies were buried in nearby mass graves. Similar mass killings took place across the Soviet Union, near the three main POW camps and also in local prisons. The final death toll was 21,892. The Soviet executioners also murdered somewhere between 600 and 1000 Jews at various sites, including Katyń.⁷⁴ Among them was the Chief Rabbi of the Polish Army, Baruch Steinberg.⁷⁵ He was 42 when he was shot at Katyń. In the camps, he had led services for Jewish soldiers and officers. Similar executions of smaller magnitude occurred throughout Soviet occupied territory, including 52,000 Lithuanians murdered by the Soviets.⁷⁶

The final act of Soviet terror played out in the very last weeks and days of the occupation. As the Nazi invasion began in 1941, many Soviet officials began to flee. This massive evacuation included the removal of industrial equipment, scientists, experts, and other vital elements for military resistance. However, no plan existed to evacuate the large numbers of inmates overcrowding Soviet prisons. Instead, the NKVD and other police agencies began a systematic mass killing, even as the German army marched ever closer. In Lvov, for example, as truck engines revved to mask the shooting, the NKVD killed all but 600–700 of 13,000 inmates in one prison.⁷⁷ There wasn’t even time to bury the bodies—which filled the basements and were left in heaps in prison yards. Similar killings occurred throughout the Soviet east in the twilight hours of the occupation. In Lithuania, 9,000 were murdered.⁷⁸ During the German attack, a Soviet tank machine-gunned women and children in a camp near Kaunas and 76 high school students were shot by the NKVD near Telsiai.⁷⁹

Jews and Communists, Jewish Communists, and the Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism

Most of the people (at least those whom I meet) are simply craving for the Germans to come. And then the real slaughtering of the Jews would start. Fury at the Jews for their outrageous sympathies to the Bolsheviks, for their internationalism, and for their arrogance is great.

History Professor ZENONAS IVINSKIS, diary entry, June 1940 (Lithuania)⁸⁰

I thought that I lived in Ukraine, but it looks as though I am in Palestine.

Anonymous Ukrainian, 1939–41⁸¹

The reception, real and perceived, with which various groups met first the Soviets and then the Germans played a significant role in the fate of Jews in both periods. One of the most pernicious outcomes of the period of Soviet rule was the substantial support it lent to the antisemitic Judeo-Bolshevist myth. Many non-Jews in newly occupied Soviet territory became convinced that the Jews were driving influences behind the Soviet regime, and hence, their own suffering. This was not at all a new form of antisemitism brought by the Red Army, but instead simply another context and permutation of existing prejudice. Various aspects of the occupation exacerbated anti-Jewish feeling to be sure, but they did not create it. Regardless, sometimes the distinction between myth and reality matters little and it was so in the East. The effects of this Judeo-Bolshevist perspective would be violently felt with the arrival of the Germans.

A somewhat blinkered view of both Jewish reaction to Soviet occupation and its participation in the regime exacerbated this division between Jews and non-Jews. First, we have seen that there were certainly some Jews who were happy to greet the Red Army as liberators, from both pragmatic and ideological standpoints. Not surprisingly, Jews were quite relieved to avoid the horrors the Nazis were visiting upon western Poland; this drove even more Jews East as refugees. Older, more traditional Jewish communities, though wary of the Soviets, viewed them as the lesser of two evils. After all, the Soviet government was the only one of its time that actively combated antisemitism. And the evidence clearly indicates that Jews did not thrive in any real way under Communism.

Second, the more complex aspect of the Judeo-Bolshevik myth held by local populations concerned the role of Jews in the newly established Soviet regimes. Many non-Jews had long believed that all Jews closely identified with Communism. As with all stereotypes, there was a kernel of truth to this. In the Soviet Union itself, “Jews held 33.7 percent of the posts in the central apparatus of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NK VD), 40.5 percent of its top leadership and secretariat, and 39.6 percent in its main State Security Administration (GUGB)” between 1934 and 1941.⁸² The prevalence of Jews in the hated NKVD or secret police, far above their proportion of the population, was not helpful; however, again, it was visibility that hurt because, after all, well over 60 percent of posts were occupied by non-Jews . . . and those Jews who did serve were nothing like most of their countrymen. In Poland before the war, it is estimated that most Jews supported the popular Pilsudski government and that only five to seven percent supported the Communists.⁸³

When the Soviets arrived, those Jews who were already Communist as well as some of the younger and more secularized Jews did seek positions in the new governments being formed. As mentioned, the Soviets offered professional and educational opportunities that had been out of reach under previous regimes. Local populations mostly failed to appreciate this. As one scholar wrote, “the fact that any of them occupied these positions of authority at all changed Lithuanian thinking about the nature of the ethnic hierarchy.”⁸⁴ That is to say, this challenged the notion that only those of Lithuanian ethnicity should be in power. A Lithuanian Jewish witness captured the meaning of Judeo-Bolshevism perfectly when he said that “relatively few Jews got those new jobs, but to the Lithuanians it looked like an invasion . . . when one thought of the fact that there was not a single Jew before in those places, every Jew looked unreasonably conspicuous.”⁸⁵ In Poland, the emissary of the Polish government exile, Jan Karski, analyzed the plight of Jews. Karski was certainly no enemy of the Jews but he reported the following disturbing impression:

In principle, however, and in their mass, the Jews have created here a situation in which the Poles regard them as devoted to the Bolsheviks and—one can safely say—wait for the moment when they will be able simply to take revenge upon the Jews. Virtually all Poles are bitter and disappointed in relation to the Jews; the overwhelming majority (first among them of course the youth) literally look forward to an opportunity for “repayment in blood.”⁸⁶

Karski describes here the explosive tension created by Poles who believed that all Jews had become lackeys of the Soviets. This was, of course, not the case. Most Polish Jews were not communist, nor did they serve the Soviet state.

Indeed, in Lithuania (and elsewhere), there is evidence that Jews were not really overrepresented in government. In 1939, before the Soviet invasion, of the 1,120 members of the Lithuanian Communist Party, Jews made up 35 percent. In the official Communist Party of January 1, 1941, only 16.6 percent were Jews.⁸⁷ These numbers show an overrepresentation of Jews, but certainly not dominance of the Soviet regime. It is also telling that Lithuania turned away Jews fleeing the Nazis in 1939 before it fell to the Soviets. One Jewish refugee recalled an acquaintance who “after reaching the Lithunian side of the border . . . was cruelly driven back by Lithuanian soldiers.”⁸⁸ It is more than a little ironic that by 1939, the Soviets had already begun purging Jews from high party positions. This included the replacement by Stalin of the Jewish Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov with Molotov who would go on to sign the pact with Hitler. It is thought this was done to appease the Führer.⁸⁹

Significantly, while Jews did rise to prominence both in the Soviet Union and in the occupied territories, it was not necessarily due to any special affinity with Soviets. In one instance near Pinsk in eastern Poland, the Polish police chief turned the town over to a known Jewish communist, shook hands, and fled.⁹⁰ The occupiers sought trustworthy officials and, therefore, would certainly not rely on national majority ethnicities such as the Poles or Lithuanians. They knew that Jews were rarely strong supporters of local nationalist organizations, were motivated to avoid capture by the Germans, and so had a vested interest in the Soviet state. We should add that many were excited about political, economic, and social opportunities. So, receptive Jews were a natural choice in local government for the Soviets. But they were never a permanent solution, either in the USSR or the occupied territories. In general, Jews merely served as placeholders until Soviet officials could arrive from the Soviet Union proper at which time “local Jews were relegated to inferior posts or removed altogether.”⁹¹ In Lithuania, “very few native Lithuanians, Jewish or otherwise, played significant roles in the Sovietization and governance of their country” according to one scholar.⁹² Indeed, the Soviets did not always show themselves to be above antisemitism. A pro-Soviet Lithuanian group proclaimed that there was “no place for Jewish oppressors” in the “ranks of honorable Communists.”⁹³ Indeed, Lithuanian Jews made up more than 10 percent of the “political activists” arrested in July 1940 and 13.5 percent of those deported immediately before the Nazi invasion.⁹⁴

Often, Judeo-Bolshevik antisemitism manifests itself in family anecdotes that may or may not reflect reality. For example, a Pole recalled that “Two NKVD officers, accompanied by three young Jews wearing red armbands, came at night and arrested my uncle. They made offensive and disgracing remarks, pointing to a painting of Jesus and a picture of Pilsudski.”⁹⁵ How this witness knew the three men were Jews is unclear, but the association in his mind is clear. Certainly, some Jews were collaborators with the Soviet state in these most painful areas of the police and NKVD. But so too were non-Jews. Jews were simply more visible. In the memory of some, this connection between Jews and Soviets became almost pathological. One man interviewed long after the war contended that the arrests of family members by the NKVD were “facilitated by Jews” and that his father had been arrested by a “malicious Jew.”⁹⁶ This is, of course, possible, but it is much more likely that we are hearing the expression of the Judeo-Bolshevik myth as a way for this individual to make meaning of his own suffering.

The role of Jews in Soviet occupation regimes remains a contentious topic, but mainly for nationalist writers seeking to deflect responsibility for later anti-Jewish atrocities. The historical consensus is that there were Jews in positions in Soviet governments and that at times they were even over-represented, but that they rarely played significant roles and certainly did not drive Soviet policy. Local collaboration by non-Jews was assuredly more important, but less visible; it also did not fit as easily into a nationalist anti-Soviet narrative. Instead, for those in the occupied territories who had suffered the painful and deeply personal loss of family, livelihood, and position, “the Jews” as a group served as scapegoats. Judeo-Bolshevist antisemitism ceased to be a vague concept; to its adherents, it had a very specific face and very personal repercussions. On December 8, 1939, a member of the local Polish underground sent the chilling message that “all the Poles here, from the elderly to the women and children, will take such a horrible revenge on the Jews as no anti-Semite has ever imagined possible.”⁹⁷

This blaming of the Jews for the actions of the Soviets was not a new phenomenon; indeed, in some ways, it hearkens back to the days when any kind of political or economic upheaval could result in a pogrom. The violent hatred that many in the East held for the Jews did not spring from a vacuum, but it was greatly exacerbated by the actions of the Soviets during the short two years in which they occupied Poland and the Baltic States. It was also a hatred that the Germans did not overlook.

The period of Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, the Baltic States, and Ukraine had important repercussions for both non-Jews and Jews. The experience of occupation was also vital in laying some of the groundwork for the nature of the Holocaust there. Some scholars, particularly in Eastern Europe, have sought to blame the Soviet period for all that followed which is a mischaracterization. However, the period from 1939–1941 was important. First, it created a period of instability while destroying state structures that had maintained order, if an authoritarian often antisemitic one. Second, it provided very real grievances for nationalists in these countries to rally around real losses of family and friends that would engender a very real hatred of the Soviets and communism. This strengthened both the position of nationalists (who were often antisemitic) and a willingness to collaborate with the Germans. Third, the actual behavior of Jews and, more importantly, the gross exaggerations of it according to the Judeo-Bolshevik myth created populations that were at least more disposed to anti-Jewish violence. This last point does not in any way suggest that there was not sufficient latent antisemitism in Eastern Europe to provide motivation for later anti-Jewish violence by collaborators, but it recognizes that the Soviet experience stoked the fires of antisemitism either in reality or in the mind and made those fires burn brighter when the Nazis arrived in June 1941.

Selected Readings

Gross, Jan Tomasz. Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Levin, Dov. The Lesser of Two Evils: Eastern European Jewry under Soviet Rule, 1939–1941. Trans. Naftali Greenwood. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995.

Roberts, Geoffrey. Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.

Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2012.

Sword, Keith, ed. The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern Provinces, 1939–41. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.