Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union Eliyana R. Adler

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 466-468
Author(s):  
William W Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Refugees

scholarly journals The Gulag of Poets: The Experience of Exile, Forced Labour Camps, and Wandering in the USSR in the Works of Polish-Yiddish Writers (1939–1949)

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 141-162
Author(s):  
Magdalena Ruta
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
Psychological Burden ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Times ◽  
Literary Output

The literary output of the Polish-Yiddish writers who survived WWII in the Soviet Union is mostly a literary mirror of the times of exile and wartime wandering. The two major themes that reverberate through these writings are: the refugees’ reflection on their stay in the USSR, and the Holocaust of Polish Jews. After the war, some of them described that period in their memoirs and autobiographical fiction, however, due to censorship, such accounts could only be published abroad, following the authors’ emigration from Poland. These writings significantly complement the texts produced during the war, offering plentiful details about life in Poland’s Eastern borderlands under Soviet rule as it was perceived by the refugees, or about the fate of specific persons in the subsequent wartime years. This literature, written in – and about – exile is not only an account of what was happening to Polish-Jewish refugees in the USSR, but also a testimony to their coping with an enormous psychological burden caused by the awareness (or the lack thereof) of the fate of Jews under Nazi German occupation. What emerges from all the literary texts published in post-war Poland, even despite the cuts and omissions caused by (self)-censorship, is an image of a postwar Jewish community affected by deep trauma, hurt and – so it seems – split into two groups: survivors in the East (vicarious witnesses), and survivors in Nazi-occupied Poland (direct victim witnesses). The article discusses on samples the necessity of extending and broadening of that image by adding to the reflection on Holocaust literature (which has been underway for many years) the reflection on the accounts of the experience of exile, Soviet forced labour camps, and wandering in the USSR contained in the entire corpus of literary works and memoirs written by Polish-Yiddish writers.

scholarly journals The Israeli Case

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 447-464
Author(s):  
Fred Lazin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Russian Immigrants ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
Israeli Population ◽  
Israeli Government ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Jewish Immigrants ◽  
The Eu

The paper presents an account of the Israeli government’s efforts to absorb and integrate an influx of Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union and Ethiopia. With fewer than five million persons, Israel accepted 400,000 Jewish refugees between 1989–1992. At the time, the Israeli government discouraged granting of political asylum to tens of thousands of mostly Muslim refugees from East Africa. Furthermore, an Israeli law prevented family reunification of Israeli Arab citizens who married Palestinians living outside of Israel (including the occupied territories). The paper looks at policies designed to provide housing and education to the Russian and Ethiopian immigrants. Israeli absorption policies were not coordinated. Prime Minister Shamir later told the author “Who needed policy? Let them come and we will make policy.” Policies gave preferential treatment to Russian immigrants who had more clout than the Ethiopians. They also had greater social capital. While the national government and the Jewish Agency, an NGO representing world Jewry, set immigration policy, mayors had some input in implementation. One mayor discussed here used absorption of immigrants as a means to foster local economic growth and development. The major finding here is the importance of “political will”. Israeli government officials and much of the Israeli population favoured mass immigration of Jews regardless of where they were from. Israeli leaders want to preserve a Jewish majority among its citizens. With respect to lessons for the EU, the findings here suggest that the successful absorption and acceptance of refugees lies in the attitude of the host country toward immigration. Policies and issues of coordination and implementation are secondary concerns. In the Israeli case despite the lack of adequate resources and lack of coordination absorption of immigrants succeeded.

scholarly journals SOVIET REPRESSION AGAINST REFUGEE JEWS FROM THE TERRITORY OF POLAND AND CZECH-SLOVAKIA BEFORE AND AT THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR II

2021 ◽  
pp. 105-120
Author(s):  
Natalia Kuzovova
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Main Research ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Refugees ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
State Archives ◽  
Southern Ukraine

Purpose: to analyze a set of documents stored in the funds of the State Archives of Kherson region – cases of repressed refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1938-1941. Based on historiographical and source studies on this topic, to outline the general grounds for arrest and persecution of refugees by Soviet authorities and to find out why Jews – former citizens of Poland and Czechoslovakia – found themselves in the focus of repression. Research methodology. The main research methods were general and special-historical, as well as methods of archival heuristics and scientific criticism of sources. Scientific novelty. Previously unpublished documents are introduced into scientific circulation: cases of repressed refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia, analysis of the Soviet government's policy towards Jews who tried to escape from the Nazis in the USSR and the Union Republics in southern Ukraine, including Kherson. The forms of repression applied by the NKVD to refugee Jews are analyzed, and the consequences of such a policy for the German government's policy of genocide in the occupied territories are examined. Conclusions. The study found that the formal reason for the persecution of Jewish refugees was the illegal crossing of the border with the USSR, since the Soviet Union, like many countries in the world, refused to accept Jews fleeing the Nazi persecution. The Soviet government motivated this by the fact that refugee Jews spread mood of defeat and panic, spied for Germany, Britain, and Poland, had anti-Soviet views, and conducted anti-Soviet campaigning. As a result of the arrests and deportations of Jewish refugees, the Jewish population, particularly in southern Ukraine, was unaware of the persecution of Jews in lands occupied by Nazi Germany. In fact, the Jewish refugees sent to the concentration camps, along with the Germans of Ukraine and the Volga region, were the only groups of people thus "evacuated" by the Soviet authorities on ethnic grounds. However, due to the enemy's rapid offensive, refugees who did not fall into the hands of the NKVD shared the tragic fate of Ukrainian Jews during the Holocaust.

Marital Stability Among Jewish and Mixed Couples Following Immigration to Israel From the Former Soviet Union

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoav Lavee ◽  
Ludmila Krivosh
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Social Adjustment ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Marital Stability ◽  
Marital Instability ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Mixed Marriages ◽  
Marital Outcomes ◽  
Jewish Immigrants

This research aims to identify factors associated with marital instability among Jewish and mixed (Jewish and non-Jewish) couples following immigration from the former Soviet Union. Based on the Strangeness Theory and the Model of Acculturation, we predicted that non-Jewish immigrants would be less well adjusted personally and socially to Israeli society than Jewish immigrants and that endogamous Jewish couples would have better interpersonal congruence than mixed couples in terms of personal and social adjustment. The sample included 92 Jewish couples and 92 ethnically-mixed couples, of which 82 couples (40 Jewish, 42 mixed) divorced or separated after immigration and 102 couples (52 Jewish, 50 ethnically mixed) remained married. Significant differences were found between Jewish and non-Jewish immigrants in personal adjustment, and between endogamous and ethnically-mixed couples in the congruence between spouses in their personal and social adjustment. Marital instability was best explained by interpersonal disparity in cultural identity and in adjustment to life in Israel. The findings expand the knowledge on marital outcomes of immigration, in general, and immigration of mixed marriages, in particular.

The Contribution of Pavlov's Typology of CNS Properties to Personality Research

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Strelau
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Animal Species ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
The West ◽  
Personality Dimensions ◽  
Personality Research ◽  
Personality Theories ◽  
Strength Of Excitation ◽  
Point Of Departure

This paper presents Pavlov's contribution to the development of biological-oriented personality theories. Taking a short description of Pavlov's typology of central nervous system (CNS) properties as a point of departure, it shows how, and to what extent, this typology influenced further research in the former Soviet Union as well as in the West. Of special significance for the development of biologically oriented personality dimensions was the conditioned reflex paradigm introduced by Pavlov for studying individual differences in dogs. This paradigm was used by Russian psychologists in research on types of nervous systems conducted in different animal species as well as for assessing temperament in children and adults. Also, personality psychologists in the West, such as Eysenck, Spence, and Gray, incorporated the CR paradigm into their theories. Among the basic properties of excitation and inhibition on which Pavlov's typology was based, strength of excitation and the basic indicator of this property, protective inhibition, gained the highest popularity in arousaloriented personality theories. Many studies have been conducted in which the Pavlovian constructs of CNS properties have been related to different personality dimensions. In current research the behavioral expressions of the Pavlovian constructs of strength of excitation, strength of inhibition, and mobility of nervous processes as measured by the Pavlovian Temperament Survey (PTS) have been related to over a dozen of personality dimensions, mostly referring to temperament.

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