Polish Jews in Kazakhstan during the Second World War

Evacuation does not explain every Polish Jewish route

A Polish Jew’s journey to Kazakhstan might begin with flight from Warsaw, Lwów, Białystok or another city after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Escaping the German army did not, however, mean that subsequent movement within the USSR was voluntary evacuation.

After Poland was partitioned, its eastern territories came under Soviet control. Many Jewish refugees from the German zone had already fled there. Soviet authorities subsequently arrested or deported some as politically or socially “unreliable”, including for refusing Soviet citizenship. A life story could therefore combine flight from the Nazis, followed by Soviet deportation, special settlement, release and relocation to Kazakhstan.

This complex route explains why different sources might describe the same person as a refugee, deportee, special settler, Polish citizen in the USSR and, later, someone evacuated from the USSR with the Polish army.

Refuge and coercion on Soviet territory from 1939 to 1941

After Germany attacked Poland, hundreds of thousands of Jews fled east from the German zone. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum documents this mass movement and the subsequent Soviet arrests and deportations to Siberia, Central Asia and other parts of the Soviet interior.

A recent study in Holocaust and Genocide Studies estimates that Soviet authorities arrested around 24 thousand Polish Jews in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus and deported another 68 to 71 thousand. These included residents of eastern Poland and Jewish refugees from German-occupied areas. Special settlements were located across the USSR, including Kazakhstan.

These figures cover the entire Soviet territory, not Kazakhstan alone. They cannot be turned into a claim that “70 thousand Polish Jews were deported to Kazakhstan”. Kazakhstan was one region of the special settlement system and one destination for the subsequent movement of Polish Jews after their release in 1941.

Special settlement and the Gulag had different legal regimes

The word “exile” does not capture the differences between these regimes.

A special settler usually lived in a remote locality or workers’ settlement under administrative supervision and with restricted freedom of movement. A Gulag prisoner was held in the camp system of punishment and forced labour. Someone might first be sent to a special settlement, then be arrested again and imprisoned in a camp.

Research on Polish Jews in the USSR describes repeated repression. A single life could involve several successive statuses that cannot be reduced to the general label “repressed”.

July and August 1941 changed the legal status of tens of thousands

On 22 June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. In the new wartime situation, the USSR and the Polish government in exile restored relations. The Sikorski–Mayski agreement was signed on 30 July, and on 12 August Soviet authorities announced the so-called “amnesty” for Polish citizens.

Soviet authorities used “amnesty” to describe the release of Polish citizens who had been arrested, imprisoned or placed in special settlements. The term does not mean that they had committed a crime.

According to Soviet documents cited in a recent study, 90,662 Polish Jews previously arrested or deported from eastern Poland were released between August 1941 and December 1942.

Release did not mean a return home. The western territories were war zones or under German occupation, travel was restricted, and many people no longer had a safe place to return to.

Many therefore headed to Central Asia after release

Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan became major destinations. Researchers identify several reasons, including a milder climate than in northern special settlements and camps, the relocation of Soviet enterprises and institutions to eastern regions, and hopes of finding work or joining Polish military and civilian organisations.

This movement was a different event from deportation in 1940. After the “amnesty”, someone might regain freedom of movement and seek a place in Kazakhstan independently while still being a refugee without housing, money or adequate supplies.

Kazakhstan was a place of forced settlement and, after release in 1941, also became a destination for the onward movement of Polish Jews.

Adam Kahane’s route from Poland to Kazakhstan

Adam Kahane was born in Poland and found himself in the Soviet zone in 1939. In June 1940, he and his relatives were deported into the Soviet interior. After the Polish–Soviet agreement, the family was able to leave the settlement and reach Kazakhstan by train.

They settled on a collective farm about ten miles from Lenger-Ugol, today Lenger in Turkestan Region. Kahane then tried to join the Polish army being formed in the USSR. His USHMM biography says that he was drafted but sent back the next day because Jews were not being accepted at that time.

In September 1942, Adam and his relative Reggie began attending a nursing school in Chimkent and graduated with honours in spring 1945.

Kahane fled Poland, survived Soviet deportation, then lived in Kazakhstan after release and attended nursing school.

Miriam Lewent’s route differed from Adam Kahane’s

Miriam Lewent’s family also fled after Germany invaded Poland, came under Soviet rule and was deported to the Tomsk area. They lived in harsh conditions and worked for food rations.

The family was released after Germany attacked the USSR. They initially hoped to return to Poland, but most of the family ultimately spent the rest of the war in Kazakhstan. Miriam recalled that her father taught Hebrew to Jewish children there.

Miriam’s testimony concerns her family and the teaching of Hebrew in her surroundings. It does not establish that an official network of Jewish schools for Polish refugees existed throughout Kazakhstan.

Anders’s army did not offer an equal route out of the USSR

The 1941 agreement allowed Polish armed forces to be formed on Soviet territory under General Władysław Anders. For some Polish citizens, the army offered a way out of the USSR.

Jews also served in Anders’s army. Yad Vashem estimates their number at around 4 thousand soldiers, roughly 5% of its strength. A recent academic study states that 6 to 7 thousand Polish Jews were able to leave the USSR in 1942 with the Polish army and accompanying civilians.

Yad Vashem’s estimate concerns military personnel. The number leaving the USSR also includes civilians accompanying the army.

Access to the army was not equal. Sources document antisemitism and restrictions on recruitment. Adam Kahane’s experience provides a specific example of a Jewish conscript being rejected after arriving at the military camp. Yad Vashem also describes hostility among some officers and cases of Jews being refused entry or removed from the army.

Thousands of Jews served in Anders’s army. Sources also document discrimination in recruitment and within its ranks.

In 1942, some Polish Jews were able to leave via Iran

The main evacuation route for Anders’s army and civilian refugees ran through Central Asia to Krasnovodsk on the Caspian Sea, then to the Iranian port of Pahlavi, now Bandar-e Anzali. Other routes also connected Central Asia with Iran.

USHMM estimates the total flow of Polish military personnel and civilian refugees arriving in Iran at more than 116 thousand people, including 5 to 6 thousand Jews. The academic estimate of 6 to 7 thousand Polish Jews leaving the USSR with Anders’s army is similar in scale but uses a different counting boundary.

Only some of the Polish Jews in the USSR during the war were able to leave through this channel.

The “Tehran Children” story extends beyond Kazakhstan

Among the civilians who left the USSR was a group of around a thousand Jewish children, most of them orphans. After staying in Iran, they arrived in Mandatory Palestine in 1943 and became known as the “Tehran Children”.

Their journeys passed through Soviet orphanages and Central Asia, but sources describe different routes. Some went through Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and other regions. This story belongs to the wider history of Polish Jews in Central Asia, but cannot automatically be labelled “children evacuated from Kazakhstan”.

Kazakhstan was part of the Soviet interior through which Polish refugees tried to reach the army, Polish institutions and routes out of the USSR.

Those who did not leave via Iran continued living in Kazakhstan and other Soviet republics

Most Polish Jews who survived the war on Soviet territory did not leave with Anders’s army. They worked, studied and moved between republics, facing food shortages, illness and renewed mobilisation.

Kahane spent several years in Kazakhstan. Miriam Lewent’s family remained there until the end of the war.

There is not yet sufficient evidence to give an exact number of Polish Jews living in Kazakhstan at any one point during the war. The flows kept changing. People arrived after release from special settlements, left for Uzbekistan or Anders’s army, moved for work, entered education or left the USSR.

After the war, most sought to leave the USSR

In July 1945, Soviet authorities allowed Polish and Jewish former citizens of Poland to change their Soviet citizenship and leave for Poland. Large-scale post-war repatriation began.

A recent study reports that by mid-1946 almost 137 thousand Polish Jews had returned to Poland through organised repatriation; including people arriving by other routes, the total might have reached around 163 thousand.

For many, Poland was only the next stop. They found murdered families and destroyed communities, ruined homes and post-war antisemitic violence. USHMM notes the subsequent mass departure of Polish Jewish survivors, especially after pogroms in 1945 and 1946.

A journey might lead from Poland through Soviet territory and deportation to Kazakhstan or elsewhere in Central Asia, then to post-war Poland and onward to Palestine, Israel, the United States or another country.

Kazakhstan could remain a crucial, years-long chapter in a person’s life even if they left the republic after the war.

Some Polish Jews remained in the Soviet Union

Researchers estimate that around 10% of Polish Jews who survived the war in the USSR continued living on Soviet territory in the post-war decades. Their reasons differed. People stayed because of marriage and new families, education and careers, military service, the absence of relatives in Poland, fear of returning, inability to complete departure paperwork in time or an outright refusal by Soviet authorities.

Overall Soviet statistics do not establish how many of these people remained in Kazakhstan after the war.

For some, Kazakhstan was initially a forced or temporary place of residence and later became home.

“Saved by the Soviet Union” and “repressed by the Soviet Union” can describe the same life

Both circumstances could occur in one life story.

Soviet deportation was a repressive policy. People were deprived of freedom, homes and the ability to choose where to live. Conditions in special settlements and camps caused illness and death.

At the same time, being deep inside the USSR often saved these Jews from Nazi extermination, which almost completely destroyed the Jewish communities of occupied Poland.

In one family, Soviet deportation and subsequent release might precede years of harsh life in Kazakhstan, far from Nazi occupation. Escape from extermination and Soviet coercion remained parts of the same life story.

Established findings

• Soviet authorities arrested or deported tens of thousands of Polish Jews from 1939 to 1941. Special settlements were located in Kazakhstan among other places.
• After the 1941 “amnesty”, most of those released moved to Central Asia, including Kazakhstan.
• Kazakhstan is documented as a wartime home for specific Polish Jewish families and individual refugees.
• Polish Jews served in Anders’s army, while sources also document discrimination and recruitment restrictions.
• In 1942, several thousand Polish Jews left the USSR via Iran alongside Polish military personnel and civilians.
• Most Polish Jews who survived the war in the USSR returned to Poland afterwards; some later emigrated elsewhere, while a smaller group remained in the USSR.

What cannot yet become precise Kazakhstan statistics

Sufficient evidence has not been found for precise statistics on four distinct groups of Polish Jews in Kazakhstan.

• People deported directly to the Kazakh SSR itself.
• Polish Jews living in Kazakhstan after the “amnesty” in individual years from 1941 to 1945.
• Kazakhstan residents who left specifically from there with Anders’s army.
• Polish Jews who permanently remained in Kazakhstan after the war.

Union-wide figures do not provide these separate indicators for Kazakhstan.

In brief

• 1939. After Poland’s partition, many Jewish refugees found themselves in the Soviet zone.
• 1940 and 1941. Soviet authorities arrested around 24 thousand Polish Jews. Between 68 and 71 thousand Polish Jews were deported to special settlements in different Soviet regions, including Kazakhstan.
• 30 July and 12 August 1941. The Sikorski–Mayski agreement and the Soviet “amnesty” changed Polish citizens’ status. Between August 1941 and December 1942, 90,662 previously arrested or deported Polish Jews were released.
• After release. Many headed to Central Asia, including Kazakhstan.
• 1942. An academic estimate puts the number of Polish Jews able to leave the USSR with Anders’s army and civilians at around 6 to 7 thousand. USHMM estimates the Jewish component of Polish refugee arrivals in Iran at 5 to 6 thousand.
• Anders’s army. Thousands of Jews served in it, but sources also document discrimination in recruitment and within its ranks.
• Family stories in Kazakhstan. Adam Kahane lived near Lenger and studied in Chimkent. Miriam Lewent’s family spent much of the war there.
• 1945 to 1946. Most Polish Jews in the USSR registered to return to Poland. By mid-1946, almost 137 thousand had returned through organised repatriation.
• After the war. Some emigrated beyond Poland; others remained in the Soviet Union. The exact number who stayed in Kazakhstan is unknown.