Czechoslovak Jewish Refugees in the Gulag

Containing meticulous research of a long under-represented part of both the Nazi and Soviet repressions, this book provides a rich documentation of the Gulag environment as told by Jewish refugees.

An in-depth look into the Soviet persecution of Jewish refugees, this book offers twenty-one different interviews with Czechoslovak Jewish refugees who found themselves in Soviet labor and POWcamps between 1939 and 1941. They represent around two thousand Czechoslovak Jews who escaped persecution from German and Hungarian occupational forces and Slovak fascists by fleeing to the East. The Soviets sentenced most of them to long stints of forced labour in the Gulags for illegal immigration, espionage, and other arbitrary accusations. A specific group was formed by the Jews from the Hungarian labour service who either defected to or were captured by the Soviets.

Dvořák and Hradilek chronicle four waves of escape—those from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Nisko concentration camp, Carpathian Ruthenia, and the aforementioned labour service. Thorough and clear, every interview coincides with supplementary documents and photographs found in the NKVD archives, sourced from Ukraine.