SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 355
and their residents evacuated. In the western Polish regions, integrated
into Germany and designated “Warthegau,” the Jews were concentrated
in the �od� ghetto to the extent that they had not been transferred to the
East. In view of this ghetto’s industrial significance, it was dissolved
only in the summer of 1944. Considering this general situation, it is
quite possible that the only Jews still living in the former General Government
or the former Warthegau were Jews who had been lucky
enough to find refuge among the Aryan population.
We believe the figure of 140,000 Jews who returned to Poland from
the USSR, as quoted in the American Jewish Yearbook, to be far too
low. By 1946 the “Holocaust” lore had already taken shape, and it
would therefore have been in the interest of the Zionists to raise the
Jewish losses to as high a level as possible.
Could these returnees have been, to a greater or lesser degree, Jews
who had taken refuge in the part of Poland which was annexed to the
USSR after the German invasion of September of 1939? The number of
such refugees was extremely high. E. Kulischer, whose statistics are
generally quite reliable, stated that there were 500,000 of them. 1059 The
American Jewish Yearbook informs us that, in the first half of 1940,
these refugees were given the choice of either taking on Soviet citizenship
or going back into the German zone. According to the Yearbook
“many” of the refugees opted for the latter alternative, but Germany refused
categorically to let these Jews return. Towards the end of June
1940 the Soviet government ordered them to be deported into the inner
regions of the Soviet Union, where the conditions are reported to have
been extremely harsh. 1060
We believe it to be highly improbable that these Jews had the possibility
to return to Poland from Central Asia or Siberia in 1945 or 1946.
In the same way, the returnees are unlikely to have been Jews who had
acquired Soviet citizenship, because Soviet citizens normally were not
allowed to emigrate. Thus it is most likely that the returnees were part
of the Jews who had been moved to the eastern areas by the Germans
three or four years earlier.
1059 E.M. Kulischer, op. cit. (note 1019), table without page number, “General Survey of
Population Displacement in Europe since the Beginning of the War.”
1060 American Jewish Yearbook, No. 43 (1941-1942), p. 241f.