Jews from Vienna in UkrSSR, 1939–1941: Between Nazi and Soviet Repressions

Abstract

On the basis of investigatory cases of NKVD from funds of archives of Ukraine, Austrian and German, as well as private collections the author shows essence of Nazi and Soviet policy towards Jews from Vienna, who were deported to railway station Nisko of former Lublin administrative district, Poland, in October 1939. The materials about staying of Vienna Jews in UkrSSR during the initial phase of World War II are collected and systematized for the first time.

Aims of the article: to define social groups of Jews, deported from Vienna and circumstances of crossing German-Soviet border by them; to characterize Soviet policy regarding legalization of status of the deportees and their placement in jobs; to define attitudes of the Viennese in UkrSSR and their plans regarding integration in the Soviet society or return at home or emigration to the third countries, as well as reaction on these aspirations of German and Soviet authorities.

For the analyses of investigatory cases from archives the author used structural, source-study and retrospective methods. On the basis of personal archeographic documents the prosopographic method enabled reconstruction of biographies of people, who were under investigation.

It is stressed that destinies of Viennese Jews-deportees with transports to Nisko, who managed to avoid Soviet deportations to the North of Russia and who remained in UkrSSR, were tragic, as with beginning of Nazi-Soviet war they again were trapped in Nazi regime, which left them no chance for survival in the Holocaust. But destinies of those, who were transported deep in the USSR, turned out to be no less tragic. Many times arrested without any grounds, convicted and deported both by Nazi and Soviet authorities, and freed only in the end of 1946, they had much less chances to survive World War II, than Polish Jews, who were also transported to the North of Russia.