Military control of the region was not the only priority for the Soviet Union at this time. In the post-war years, it was also a matter of homogenising the border region on a national level, or Sovietising and Ukrainising it (Hausleitner, p. 428). The demobilisation of the Red Army and the end of the war led to a large influx of Ukrainian and Russian families, as well as Jews from eastern parts of the country, into the city and the region. There was therefore a need for housing for the new arrivals, which may have been another reason for Soviet support for Jewish emigration, as it freed up much-needed housing. By 1 January 1946, 15,559 demobilised Red Army soldiers had arrived in the Chernivtsi region, of whom 3,100 settled in Chernivtsi (Frunchak, p. 317). There were also many people with Romanian and Polish citizenship living in the border region, with biographies from other political periods and systems. A solution had to be found quickly for them, and the obvious solution was to resettle them in Romania and Poland (Altshuler, p. 59). Two bilateral agreements followed, which in 1945 and 1946 led to strong migratory movements and classic repatriation processes in northern Bukovina, promoting the desired national homogenisation of the region.
As a result of a Soviet-Polish agreement on population exchange, 10,490 people had travelled from Bukovina to Poland by July 1946, including 2,041 Jews (Feleszko, p. 143). Based on a Soviet-Romanian agreement, 12,412 Romanians had already been resettled between 10 and 25 April 1945 (Javors'ka, p. 163).
The forced resettlement of the Jews of Chernivtsi by the Soviet authorities also took place at the same time as these agreements. The Soviet Minister of the Interior, Lavrenty Beriya, forwarded a letter from Khrushchev to Stalin in early July 1945. Khrushchev believed that Jews from northern Bukovina who had not been Soviet citizens before 28 June 1940 should renounce their Soviet citizenship and emigrate to Romania (Altshuler, p. 58). Attached to Chruščev's letter was a draft resolution by Berija and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, which Stalin accepted. The draft read as follows: 'Persons of Jewish nationality who are residents of Northern Bukovina who were not Soviet citizens before June 28, 1940, according to documents presented by them, shall be allowed to relinquish their Soviet citizenship and emigrate from Chernovtsy Province of the UkSSR to Romania’ (quoted in Altshuler, p. 60, here translated from Russian into English).
The resolution, which was virtually identical in wording to Chruščev's recommendations, was adopted by the Soviet government (Resolution No. 2026-525ss, 8 August 1945) and by the Ukrainian government (Resolution No. 1398-102, 31 August 1945). However, there were significant differences from the Soviet-Polish and Romanian agreements. The resolution openly violated the internationalist principle of Soviet nationality policy and was a sole and unilateral decision of the Soviet Union, without consultation with Romania.
Within six months - by February 1946 - all the preparations for the departure were made without coordination with the Romanian authorities. Only shortly before the departure did the Soviet government decide to discuss the procedure, timing and border crossings with the Romanians (Altshuler, p. 62).
Another difference from the other agreements was the Soviet authorities' assessment of this measure. While the return to Poland was referred to in the documents as 'repatriation', other terms appear in Russian in the official documents on the departure of the Jews: vyezd ('departure', 'emigration') and pereselenie ('resettlement'). In their internal correspondence, the authorities were less diplomatic and revealed their attitude by using a term with negative connotations. In a letter dated 16 November 1945, Ivan Zelenjuk (secretary of the regional committee of the Communist Party in Černovcy) referred to the deportation as vydvorenie ('expulsion', 'banishment' or 'eviction', Altshuler, p. 63).
Many Jews from the town immediately applied to leave the country. They lost their jobs, had to return their ration cards and waited with packed suitcases. When they began to besiege the party headquarters and government buildings on a daily basis, the authorities accelerated the pace of registration and exit permits, which was quite unusual (Altshuler, p. 64). In fact, only the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet could decide to revoke citizenship, and initially the documents were sent to Moscow. However, it was later decided to shorten this route. The Ukrainian government was given the power of decision, and a commission was set up in Chernivtsi to examine the registration and departure documents and send only a list of the names of Jews who wished to leave to Kiev, where the application for revocation of Soviet citizenship was granted in almost all cases (Altshuler, p. 62).
According to a report by Zelenyuk dated 6 May 1946, 17,503 Jews over the age of 18 had applied to leave the country. 17,461 (99.8 per cent) were allowed to leave, although in the end about 6 per cent decided against it and remained in Chernivtsi or northern Bukovina. A total of 21,155 Jews (including 4,894 children and adolescents) left the country on organised transports between the beginning of February and 22 April 1946. In addition, 1,152 Jews renounced their Soviet citizenship and crossed the border individually and legally during this period. The official number of Jews who left northern Bukovina in this way - by renouncing their Soviet citizenship or by leaving the country under the control of the Soviet authorities - was thus 22,307 Jews (10,072 women, 7,133 men and 5,102 children). Jewish families from the countryside were allowed to take two tonnes of personal belongings, and those from the towns one tonne. The Jews were transported across the border in vehicles belonging to local factories and the Carpathian Military District. The letter from Zelenyuk to Demyan Korotchenko (Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine) was classified at the highest level of secrecy (letter printed in Altshuler, pp. 74f.).
Text: Markus Winkler
Photo: Migrationsakte von Manfred Reifer vom 25. Juni 1947 (http://www.archives.gov.il)
Sources:
- Mordechai Altshuler: The Soviet „Transfer“ of Jews from Chernovtsy Province to Romania, 1945-1946. In: Jews in Eastern Europe (1998), 2 (36), S. 54-75
- Kazimierz Feleszko: Die Polen in Czernowitz. In: Harald Heppner (Hg.): Czernowitz. Die Geschichte einer ungewöhnlichen Stadt. Köln 2000, S. 129-144
- Svitlana Frunchak: The Making of Soviet Chernivtsi: National “Reunification,” World War II, and the Fate of Jewish Czernowitz in Postwar Ukraine. Toronto 2014
- Mariana Hausleitner: Die Rumänisierung der Bukowina. Die Durchsetzung des nationalstaatlichen Anspruchs Großrumäniens 1918-1944. München 2001
- Iryna Javors’ka: Žyttja jak pošuk raju. Emihracija jevreïv z Černivec’koï oblasti (1944-1991 rr.). [Leben als Suche nach dem Paradies. Emigration der Juden aus dem Czernowitzer Gebiet 1944 bis 1991]. Černivci 2016
- Markus Winkler: Emigration oder Verbleib: Juden in Czernowitz nach 1944. In: Wolfgang Benz und Matthias Weber (Hg.): Exodus – die Juden Europas nach dem Holocaust. Berlin 2017, S. 135-148
