Dangerous Journey - The WW2 Trans-Siberian Express

                                  

by Deborah Swift

    

The Trans-Siberian Railway, stretching over 9,000 kilometres from Moscow to Vladivostok, is the longest railway line in the world and during the second world war the Trans-Siberian Express became an unlikely lifeline to thousands of refugees fleeing the ravages of war.

Completed in stages from the late 19th century and officially finished in 1916, the Trans-Siberian Railway was designed to be a symbol of Russian imperial ambition. By the 1930s, under Stalin’s regime, the railway was tightly controlled by the Soviet government, serving both civilian and military purposes for the Soviet regime.

After Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Trans-Siberian route took on an entirely new strategic importance—not only as a supply corridor for the Eastern Front but also as a humanitarian exit route.

As the Nazis swept through Europe, millions of Jewish civilians, through lack of anywhere else to go, ended up in Lithuania, which was then taken over by Soviet forces. For Jewish refugees, it was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire – under Stalin, political repression, deportations, and forced labour were commonplace, especially for intellectuals. Yet for many refugees, particularly Jews escaping the Holocaust, the USSR represented a narrow but unexpected path to survival.

                                                

The ‘Sugihara Survivors’

Some Jewish refugees who managed to flee to the Soviet Union were able to reach Japan or Shanghai, China, by traveling east. Many of these refugees were Polish or Lithuanian Jews who obtained transit visas through the efforts of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who held the consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania.

Sugihara defied his government’s orders and issued thousands of transit visas to Jewish refugees. With these documents, refugees could travel across the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express. In Vladivostock they could then board a ship to Kobe, Japan, and later to Shanghai. This escape route saved thousands of lives.

                                       

Chiune Sugihara’s Visa from the Holocaust Museum

Life on the train

Wartime travel on the Trans-Siberian Express was far from the romanticized version sold in modern travel brochures. Refugees endured extreme cold, food shortages, overcrowded compartments, and frequent stops for inspections and detentions. Nevertheless, compared to the alternative—death camps, gulags, or starvation—these hardships were endurable.

The Soviet government’s motive in allowing these transports was not purely humanitarian. In many cases, the USSR was removing anti-communists and also making them pay handsomely for the privilege. Many refugees were stopped and their valuables confiscated by the Russians.

Memorials and testimonies from survivors continue to shed light on these lesser-known refugee journeys. Documentaries, such as The Trans-Siberian Railroad: A Path to Survival, and the memoirs of survivors brought home to me the profound impact the Trans-Siberian railway had on people fleeing for their lives.

 

Read more about it:

1. Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews During World War II.
2. "Sugihara Survivors: Jewish Refugees Who Escaped via Japan." Yad Vashem. https://www.yadvashem.org
3. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Polish Refugees and the Soviet Union.” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org
4. PBS Documentary: Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness, 2000.

LAST TRAIN TO FREEDOM tells the story of some of the Sugihara Survivors.

 

Jersey in WW2 - Organisation Todt

by Deborah Swift

Russian Slave Workers of Organisation Todt

My latest research has been into the German Occupation of Jersey during WW2. At first, the surrender by the British and the occupation by the Germans was polite, and the aim by both sides was to make as little disruption as possible, but inevitably as time progressed, relationships between the German occupiers and British citizens began to break down, leading to many reports of trauma and atrocity.

One of the things that caused fear and distress on the island of Jersey was the treatment of the forced labourers of Oganisation Todt. Named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi, Organisation Todt was a civil and military engineering confederation responsible for building infrastructure such as defence works and railways.

Hitler saw The Channel Islands as key to the control of Europe and Great Britain. With this in mind, he became obsessed with the idea that The Channel Islands should not be lost, and became determined to defend them, with the idea that eventually, after Europe was defeated, they would become the ideal base for Nazi families to enjoy holidays in a 'Strength through Joy' (Kraft Durch Freude) Camp. Worryingly, when I searched for more about the KDF, I found it still exists, and has branches in the North of England. Here is a typical Propaganda poster, the only one I could find not emblazoned with swastikas.

In order to defend the islands a massive programme of fortification began, and the Organisation Todt provided the labour. This obsession with Jersey was seen by many Germans as Hitlers inselwahn - island madness. Before Hitler's supposed final victory, the islands were to be a stronghold and submarine base for forays into English waters.

For those living on the island, they had to endure the appearance of nearly 500,000 metres of reinforced concrete to make anti tank walls, gun emplacements, underground barracks and bolt holes. Historic castles were fortified with concrete, and new roads cut through the previously quiet lanes to carry truckloads of building materials, plus the many workers needed for this enormous enterprise. To prevent landing by sea, the beaches were mined by more than 100,000 mines.

The workers for this frenzy of building were imported labourers and prisoners of war from Russia, Poland and the Ukraine. According to Nazi propaganda, the Slav races were untermenschen and treated as slaves to the Nazi building machine.

To house the workers,  camps known as lagers were constructed in several places, all named after famous German poilots such as ‘Richthofen’ and ‘Immelmann’. The treatment of the workers was appalling, and most were on inadequate rations because the food was progressively stolen by German employees and guards - either for their own use, or for sale on the black market. The lorry that brought the inadequate soup to the quarries and construction sites, also took away the corpses of those who had died from malnutrition, cold, exhaustion or disease.

Note the armed guard supervising these construction workers

Jersey people were suddenly reminded through these atrocities, that their occupying force could treat pepople in this barbaric way, and this made the constant fear of the occupation much worse. The Germans shot workers caught stealing potatoes from the fields. Suddenly, their Germman neighbours seemed much less civilized when the treatment of their 'slaves' was exposed. Civilians were warned of the penalties for giving the workers food, but a number of Jersey people did try to rescue them, taking them into their homes at great risk to themselves.

According to 'The IslandWiki' - the Channel Island Website, German records show that by May 1943 there was a total of 16,000 foreign workers in Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney. In November of the same year, numbers had halved to 8,959 and by July 1944 only 817 remained.

Workers from Organisation Todt feature in one of the stories in a new collaboration by writers fron many countries - all proceeds are in aid of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The stories focus on the theme of Resistance, and the collection of ten novellas is available now.

More about the stories here

Sources: The Model Occupation - Madeleine Bunting

The First Casualty - Jersey's Occupation Experience

https://www.theislandwiki.org

Jersey Evening Post