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66 K.D.Golubev to A.A.Smirnov (Moscow)

COPY:AVP RF, F.0118, OP.2, P.2, D.7, LL.16-17

Moscow, 4 September 1946

Secret

To the Director of the Third European Department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Comrade A.A.Smirnov,

   1. This is to inform you that, according to a despatch from Colonel Starov, 1 our representative on questions of repatriation in Austria, a movement of Jews has begun in Poland, heading for Palestine through Czechoslovak territory and the Soviet zone of Austria. 2 Altogether ssome 200,000 Jews are on their way to Palestine.

注释：

1. Colonel Starov, head of the POW and OP division in the Soviet Allied Commission for Austria.

2.  The flight of Polish Jews actually began at the end of 1944. According to estimates, from the end of 1944 to june 1945, 12,000--14,000Jews left Poland for the Western-occupied-zones of Germany from July 1945 to December 1945, some 38,000 Jews; from January 1946 to Decemmber 1946, nearly 90,000 Jews; and in January-February 1947, 2,730; i.e., a total of some 140,000. The number for September 1946 was between 15 and 17 thousand (see Cohen, Ovrim kol gvul, p.468).

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   In answer to our enquiry, Colonel Konev, our representative dealing with repatriation in Poland, reported:

   A number of sources have confirmed the figure of 150-180,000 Jews who are travelling not only across Czechoslovak territory but also via Polish ports.

   According to the available data, the trains with these refugees are making for Munich, in the American zone of occupation, where there is said to be a mustering point for onward travel to Palestine. The departure of the trains from Poland is to take place at an unknown date, passing through the town of Glatz (Czechoslovakia). 3

   The main contingent of Jews consists of members of the Zionist and [Hashomer Hatsair] 4 parties and other small groups.

   In Warsaw there is a Jewish Central Committee, 5 to which a representative of the American government is appointed;6 and in the provinces and villages there are Jewish committees which ensure that Jews traveling to Palestine get free transport and food.

   During the period 15-25 July 1946, the British interfered with the transit of Jews, with the result that a number of ship were sent back to the ports of departure.

   2. In August, in the area near the camp of Bruck in Austria, about 800 Jews congreegated,7 having come from Poland, allegedly ' because of oppression by the Poles '.8

   These Jews have been approaching our officers working on the repatriation of Soviet citizens with questions and requests for their return to the Soviet Union, giving as the reason for their request that some of them were handed over to Poland in 1940 on an exchange basis in accordance with an agreement between the two governments. 9

 注释：

3. An industrial town and a railway junction in Lower Silesia. In polish ---Klodzko.

4.  Original garbled and reading is conjectural.

5.  The Jewish Central Committee was established in November 1944, with Dr. Emil Sommerstein as its president. It consisted of 30 members, 17 of them representing Zionist parties.

6.  The reference is apparently to Walter Bein, who served as representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Poland.

7.  Presumably the DP camp not far from Bruck-an-der-Mur, Steiermark (Styria), in the British zone of occupation.

8.  Between November 1944 and October 1945, 351 Jews had been murdered in Poland. On 4 July 1946, 41 Jews were killed during the Kielce pogrom (see Bauer, Flight and Rescue, pp.115,208).

9.  The claim for repatriation to the USSR was apparently based on the Agreement on Option and Evacuation of Persons of Polish and Jewish Nationality Residing in the USSR concluded between the [Polish] Provisional Government of National Unity and the Government of the USSR in Moscow on 6 July 1945. According to this agreement, Poles and Jews who until 17 September 1939 possessed Polish nationality and thereafter, during World War II, lived in territory belonging to the USSR, received the right to give up their Soviet natioinality and to resettle in Poland (see Documents on Polish-Soviet Relations, Vol.2, p.661). By the end of June 1946, the Central Jewish Committee in Warsaw and its local branches had registered 157,420 repatriates from the Soviet Union. Of course, 129,975 had returned between February and June 1946 in 203 transports (see Litvak.'Polish-Jewish Refugees Repatriated from the Soviet Union', p.235).

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   Since this question does not come within the scope of our directorate,  I would be grateful for information as to what organization deals with this matter and how our representatives should respond to such requests.

                                      Deputy Plenipotentary of the Council of Ministers

                                              Of the USSR on Matters of Repatriation

                                                               Golubev 10

注释：

10. In January 1945, Lt-Gen. Konstantin Golubev, deputy commissioner on respatation from October 1944, drew up, together with British and American representatives, a repatriation agreement which was signed at the Yalta conference 11 February 1945. In May 1945 he headed the Soviet delegation on Soviet-American repatriation negotiations in Halle.