Due to the strategic negotiations of the Lithuanian government in September 1939 and the revised version of the Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that followed, Vilnius was turned overnight into the capital city of what had been at that point, the only neutral state in Eastern Europe. After the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, Vilnius became the only place of refuge which offered temporary protection to over 30,000 Polish refugees in 1939/40, among them a lot of Jews.
This list documents a selection of names, “nationalities”, dates of arrivals and places of origins of refugees who arrived in Vilnius in 1939.
Lithuanian Central State Archive. F. 383 Ap. 7 B. 2280 L. 112a.p.
Shortly after the German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, it was decided within the first week of the war that the Polish government was to be withdrawn eastbound as Warsaw was threatened. The Polish press, among them representatives of the Jewish Polish press, was to be rescued as part of the evacuation plans.
On 8 February, 1940, Pese R. entered the office of the "Committee to Collect Material about the Destruction of Polish Jewry, 1939" in Vilnius, Lithuania in order to give an interview. She was one of many Polish Jewish refugees who had found shelter in Vilnius.
On 21 December, 1939, Chaim-Leyb D. was interviewed by the "Committee to Collect Material about the Destruction of Polish Jewry, 1939" in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Among the more than 10,000 Jews who were stranded in Vilnius in the fall of 1939 there was the librarian and political activist Herman Kruk from Warsaw. His exceptional diary records and press reports sketch a mosaic of the heterogenous society of refugees in Vilnius since the beginning of the war.
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Photo series by Bolesława and Edmund Zdanowscy
On the night of September 5 to September 6, 1939, only a few days after the German attack on Poland, a group of Jewish…
Ilija Trojanow, who fled with his parents from Bulgaria to Germany in 1971 and whose life is marked by experiences of migration, deals in…
Benzion Benshalom tells of the hardships of everyday life of the refugees in Vilnius and their worries about the measures taken by the Lithuanian…
Mendel Balberyszski (1894-1966) was born in Vilnius but had been living in Łódź for over a decade at the outbreak of the Second World…
Mendel Balberyszski (1894-1966) was born in Vilnius but had been living in Łódź for over a decade at the outbreak of the Second World…
On 22 June 1941, Herman Kruk writes about the National Socialists’ invasion of Vilnius and his decision to stay in Vilnius despite all.
On the night of September 5-6, 1939, just a few days after the German attack on Poland, a group of Jewish journalists and writers…
