Early Deportations of Jews in Occupied Poland (October 1939–June 1940): The German and the Soviet Cases

Abstract

Abstract After the division of Poland in September 1939 following the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, deportations of Polish citizens were part of the Nazis’ plan to “Germanize” western and northern Poland, though the Jewish dimension of these events has hardly been investigated. Beyond the organized deportations by the German Security Police, there were local initiatives to expel Jews to the Soviet Zone of partitioned Poland. In the Soviet-occupied Polish territories, many Jews were deported in 1940 to remote areas of the USSR either as “unreliable” or “class alien elements,” or because of their refusal to accept Soviet citizenship. While the brutal Soviet policies unintendedly saved the majority of deported Jews from German extermination, the German deportations were the precursors to total mass murder. This article describes and compares the deportations on both sides, reconstructs the German transports, and concludes that the USSR’s deportations were part of its ongoing war against political opponents and “alien elements,” whereas the Germans’ were stepping stones on Karl A. Schleunes’s “twisted road to Auschwitz.”