List of Kraków Jewish Refugees in Vilna

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939 the Jews of Poland were trapped with very few avenues of escape. The USSR-German Pact of 23 August 1939 brought Soviet dominance to the Baltic area. Lithuania ranked among the few countries of refuge for Jews when World War II broke out. The number of Jewish refugees from Poland grew considerably (to about 14,000 - 15,000) in the month following the German invasion.

About 10,000 of these Jews stayed in Vilna, and the rest in Kaunas and other places. The Lithuanian Jews made every effort to assist refugees and international organizations allocated funds to be administrated by the Vilna Kehillah Refugee Committee and, in Kaunas, by the Ezra Refugee Committee. Other allocations went for emigration aid to refugees, notably for rabbinical groups and students, and distributed in the cities via groups affiliated with the Lithuanian Red Cross. About 5,000 refugees managed to emigrate from Lithuania. One must make special note of two Righteous Gentiles who helped save Jews by providing travel documents and false citizenship: Jan Zwartendijk, the Dutch acting-consul to Lithuania, and Chiune Sugihara, Japan's acting-consul to Lithuania.

On June 15, 1940, Soviet troops crossed the Lithuanian border. During the German occupation about 95% of Lithuanian Jewry were killed (a greater percentage than in any other community in Europe). The remaining Polish refugees shared the fate of Lithuania's Jews.

The Kraków list is part of a document listing over 9,000 Jewish refugees who fled to Vilna. The original document was not separated into towns and shtetlach. This was done when a copy of the document arrived in the United States so that landsmanschaften and other organizations could be contacted for aide and funding for these refugees. The section on Jews from Kraków is typed on two pages with double columns and lists about 175 names (shown below). The list numbers show where on the original list the names appeared. Copies of the Kraków section can be viewed by clicking these links: Document One  and   Document Two.

(Material donated by Susana Leistner Bloch)

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