Historical Context

Soviet Forced Migration 

In 1939 after the signing of the anti-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany the Red Army invaded Poland, annexing the eastern parts of the county.  This area was to be known as The Second Polish Republic.  In 1940 up to 1 million people including 250,000 Poles and thousands of Ukrainians and Byelorussians were deported in three major waves to Siberia and to Central and Far Eastern Asia in order to remove the most active populations from the annexed territories. 

Although based on ethnic criteria, these forced expulsions mainly targeted families of military colonists, prisoners-of-war and foresters. They were dispatched to labor camps or executed. The deportees who survived the journey experienced very hard living conditions in exile. 

During the period of the Second World War more than one million Jews from within the territories claimed by the Soviet Union, including Eastern Poland, the Baltic countries, Bessarabia, and northern Bukovina, were forcibly moved.   Some additionally managed to escape on their own into the Soviet interior before German troops marched into their towns and villages.

A significant group of evacuees, including many Jewish families, arrived in Central Asia between 1941-1942.  Overall, it is estimated that over 1.1 million persons, about 70 percent of the Jewish population, were evacuated to Kazakhstan, Tazhikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrigzstan, and Tadzhikistan.

One estimate is that as many as 300,000 of these deportees perished due to diseases and starvation within the first 12months, while others died as Soviet soldiers during WWII.  However, none of them perished in the concentration camps and, indeed, many later emigrated to the Mandate of Palestine, later modern day Israel or elsewhere.

In 2004-2006, a group of local researchers of the Central Asia Research Project, lead by Professor Saidjon Kurbanov, selected and digitized 152,000 registration cards of Jewish evacuees and refugees available at the Central State Archives of the Republic of Uzbekistan in Tashkent.  With the funding provided by the Holocaust Memorial Museum of the United Sates (USHMM), Professor Kurbanov and his colleagues in Tashkent compiled a database consisting of 152,000 names of Jewish evacuees, along with the digital images of their registration cards.

According to the information provided by Professor Kurbanov, registration cards list only those who came directly to Tashkent and then went to different localities in Uzbekistan.  

The card catalog and database do not include those who arrived at other localities within the Uzbek Republic, as well as significant number of Jews and non-Jews who came to Tashkent after February 1942 — including people joining their family in Uzbekistan from other parts of Soviet Union.