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This episode features music created in Central Asia by Jewish evacuees, and recorded as part of the Yiddish Glory project.
When Iya Rudzitska recalls her time in Uzbekistan, she begins to resemble the little girl she was during the war. Her voice changes, and she relives what she endured.
I met her in January 2023 in Krakow. She was 92 years old, fragile but energetic, with a full head of grey hair. A year earlier, she had fled her hometown of Kyiv after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. After several months in Lithuania, a Jewish organisation brought her and her son, Artur, to Poland.
At the time, I worked as a correspondent for an international news agency, and I was tasked with finding a human story for the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp in occupied Poland. But there was a catch: my editors wanted the story to connect to the war in Ukraine.
Iya was a perfect protagonist: old enough to remember the horrors of the war but equipped with an incredible memory and a witty sense of humor. She remembered details that brought her story to life.
As she was talking about her experiences of leaving Kyiv twice, first as a ten-year-old girl, and again at the age of 91, she said something that I had not seen coming:
“We arrived in Tashkent.”
I had lived in Uzbekistan for three years and I heard fragments of stories about Jewish refugees who survived the Holocaust in Central Asia, but I never researched it. And here, in my hometown, I was sitting across from someone who had lived it.
When I met her again to record her memories and began my research, it quickly became clear that the story of European Jews who survived the Holocaust in Soviet Asia has largely been forgotten.
Goodbye, Kyiv
The first bombs fell on Kyiv at 4 am.
Iya remembers it vividly. In the middle of the night, her uncle, doctor Salomon Weisblatt, was called to the hospital to treat the wounded. Iya, along with her parents and 17-year-old brother Shurik, rushed to a nearby bomb shelter, trembling with fear.
Operation Barbarossa began on June 22nd, 1941. Nazi Germany turned against its ally, the Soviet Union, and a new front of the Second World War opened. In Kyiv, what followed were weeks of utter chaos: everyone wanted to escape before it was too late.
But for those like Iya and her family, the invasion meant more than just fear of bombs or conscription. Eastern European Jews were among Hitler’s first targets. As the front moved closer to Kyiv, the Weisblatts needed an escape plan – and they needed it fast.
The family was influential. Iya’s grandfather, Naum Weisblatt, was a well-known Kyiv rabbi, and her uncles were well-connected doctors.
Her father, Vladimir, was a publisher, writer, and translator known in Ukraine’s literary circles. Although he had fallen out with Soviet authorities over some of his work, the family remained respected and well-off, living in a large apartment in central Kyiv.
As a child, Iya had German governesses and grew up surrounded by books. In theory, the Weisblatts’ social position could help them secure evacuation.
“There was a window of time between June and August when people could leave. The Soviet Union organised a very efficient evacuation of civilians from the war zone. They were interested in preserving the country’s cultural and industrial resources. This meant evacuating factories and industries: metal production, weapons manufacturing, clothing production, even agriculture,” says Anna Shternshis, a professor of Jewish studies at the University of Toronto and a specialist in Soviet Jewish history.
“People who ran these industries were, of course, evacuated with them. Because of the way Soviet Jewish history developed, Jews were very well-represented – sometimes overrepresented – in many of these sectors, so a large number of Jews ended up being evacuated to the Soviet rear.”
Writers, actors and cultural workers also made it to the evacuation lists. While Jews were never prioritised as a group, many of them were saved.
Iya and her family believed the war would last no more than two months. They packed their most essential belongings and went to the train station, hoping their connections would help them board a train carrying hospital equipment to Kharkiv.
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They were right. They secured a place on the floor, right next to the bathroom.
“My dad’s sister was sitting there with her daughter and the daughter’s husband. He was very religious. As the train was about to leave, an old man approached – it was his father. He asked: ‘where are you going? What about my jewelry store? Who’s going to run it?’ And then the man jumped off the train,” Iya says.
Weeks later, he perished in Babyn Yar, in the Nazi massacre of Jews.
After two months in Kharkiv, the Weisblatts were on the move again. Iya does not know how they managed to get train tickets, but they left the city on September 21st, her 11th birthday.
“We ended up in Lopan. The tanks were crossing the bridge, and there was our little car. At that moment, the Germans started bombing. Bombs were falling. It was really terrifying,” she says.
“We moved past Lopan and were passing a store. My mom said: ‘stop here for a minute. It’s her birthday.’ She ran in and bought me a pair of boys’ shoes. I wore them for a long time. Then we reached the train, and off we went.”
Iya does not remember exactly how long the journey lasted. For an 11-year-old from a well-off urban family, it was likely a deeply traumatising experience.
The journey
“People who managed to get on those trains were, in a sense, the lucky ones. Those who stayed behind, especially Jews, their chances of survival were close to zero, less than 1 per cent in Kyiv. But the journey itself was incredibly difficult. Some trains had seats and benches, but most did not,” Shternshis explains.
“People sat on the floor, packed by the hundreds into cattle cars. There were no bathrooms. It was a very harsh journey. It was also dangerous, because the war was ongoing and trains were being bombed. It often took months to reach the destination, and people didn’t even know where they were going.”
During the trip, food was barely accessible. The ability to form alliances proved crucial, as survival often depended on others.
“People would get off at train stations just to buy boiled water if they had a cup or a pot to carry it in, which was itself a valuable possession. Those who survived were usually people who managed to make friends or travelled in groups. It was nearly impossible to survive alone,” Shternshis says.
“It was truly a survival-of-the-fittest situation. Children were especially vulnerable. Many became sick with dysentery and other diseases, and many died on those trains. There are accounts from evacuations of Leningrad, which say that when trains arrived in Tashkent, half the children were dead.”
The trains carried people of many ethnicities and cultures. Inevitably, tensions arose.
“The Germans weren’t just dropping bombs, they were also dropping leaflets. These claimed that the war was caused by Jews. That no one else wanted to fight – not Germans, not Russians – only Jews. This kind of propaganda fuelled hostility,” Shternshis says.
The journey lasted months. It favoured the strongest, claimed many lives, but for those who survived, it led to safety. Upon arrival, evacuees had to register to receive bread rations and other essential supplies. They were also assigned accommodation – often with local families who were required to make room for them.
“Many people weren’t even sent to cities, they were sent to nearby collective farms to perform physical labor, mostly agricultural work. Locals were expected to open their homes and take in newcomers. Some evacuees who had money could rent space, often just a corner of a room for an entire family,” Shternshis explains.
“They also had to find work. Salaries were almost nonexistent, what mattered were rations for bread, sugar, basic goods. You couldn’t really buy them, or if you could, they were extremely expensive. So finding work was essential.”
Central Asia had its own long-established Jewish populations, both Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi. There were Bukharian Jews in Uzbekistan and Judeo-Tats in Tajikistan, who had inhabited the region for hundreds of years. There were also descendants of prisoners sent to Kazakhstan by Tsarist Russia and later by the Soviets.
Finally, there were professionals who had been sent to the region to work in construction, engineering, and other skilled fields. In Tashkent, the Jewish community was so large that even before the war, the city had a Yiddish theatre.
But the evacuations caused the proportion of Jews to skyrocket.
“There are stories that in Tashkent you could hear Yiddish in the streets. Some people even say, though I think the numbers are exaggerated, that 40 per cent of the city spoke Yiddish. People always exaggerate, of course, but the perception matters. It shows just how widespread this was,” Shternshis says.
“People didn’t end up only in Uzbekistan or Tashkent, though it was a major hub, but also in Samarkand, Bukhara, and surrounding villages. They went to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. These places became centres of Jewish culture and life.”
Yiddish Tashkent
As Shternshis explains, about 1.4 million Soviet Jews were evacuated to the Soviet rear. While some were sent to the Urals or Siberia, a large proportion were relocated to Central Asia.
In a way, Iya’s family was lucky. They rented a small room on the outskirts of Tashkent from a Russian woman. It was cramped and basic, but they had a roof over their heads. Iya did not attend school, perhaps there were none nearby, or organising education for refugee children was simply not a priority at the time.
“A woman rented us a room. She would leave for work, and we lived in this tiny room. She had a huge shepherd dog in a kennel. She was busy with work, and in her large living room there was a gramophone with records lying around. One of them was called Suffering, and I fell in love with it. Whenever she left, I would sneak in quietly, put the record on, and listen: ‘goodbye, goodbye, don’t forget my suffering,’” Iya says.
“I would sit there, completely absorbed. Then one day, the gate banged loudly— the owner had come back. I was terrified. The record was still playing. I panicked, ran outside, climbed into the doghouse, and hugged the dog. I was hiding there when she burst in, opened it, and shouted: ‘I know you listen to it every day! The neighbours told me! And I know your mother once wore my galoshes!’”
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Apart from listening to the woman’s records, Iya had little to occupy her time.
“I thought about food most of all. There were no books. I had brought one with me – I really liked it. The Great Confrontation by Lev Kassil. It was about directors, and for some reason, I wanted to become one. Even after the war.”
The mass influx of evacuees stretched Tashkent and other Central Asian cities to their limits. Food and basic necessities were scarce.
“I understood that when we arrived in Tashkent, there was a terrible famine. My mother got a job as a cleaner. She received a ration card. Almost every night, my brother would go to buy bread. He had to walk into the city center for that. You had to stand in line all night, as there were huge crowds.”
When I ask Iya what she remembers most vividly from Tashkent, she speaks about the Uzbeks living across the road. Their kindness left a lasting impression.
“I would draw water from the well and carry it back. Whenever I passed by, the Uzbeks would invite me in and feed me. That’s my fondest memory of them,” she says. “There was a hole in the floor where a fire burned with saxaul wood, and a storage area above. That’s where they fed me. Always. Whenever there was food, they shared it.”
“There was tremendous hospitality. Many people remember acts of kindness: sharing food, helping strangers,” Shternshis agrees. “There was also a lot of mutual learning. For many evacuees, it was their first time in Central Asia, and for locals, it was their first time meeting outsiders. This idea of a Muslim region welcoming Jewish refugees is especially meaningful today.”
But not everything was harmonious. Tensions existed as well.
“When my brother went to buy bread at night, he saw signs all over the city center: ‘beat the Jews, save Russia.’ Posters hung everywhere, and soldiers walked past them, smiling. No one took them down. He came home shaking with fear, poor thing,” Iya remembers.
“There were tensions. People were people, some were kind, some were traumatised, some had mixed feelings,” Shternshis says. “The lifestyle was also very different. For example, there are some accounts that say that in Tashkent, men and women stood in separate lines. Customs like head coverings were unfamiliar. This led to misunderstandings, and sometimes prejudice. Some European evacuees saw their own culture as superior, while locals resented that attitude.”
When Iya’s brother, Shurik, turned 18, he was called up to the front. He later fought in Manchuria and, after the Soviet victory, traveled to Germany. Iya did not see him again until the war ended. With him gone, only she and her parents remained.
A year and a few months into their stay in Tashkent, a letter arrived. It was from her uncle Salomon – the doctor who had lived with them in Kyiv. He invited them to move to Stalinabad, today’s Dushanbe. Soon after, Iya and her father left. Her mother joined them a few months later. Ever since, she has remembered Tashkent fondly, as the place that saved her and her family.
Despite the hardships, hunger, and overcrowding, Uzbekistan developed a good reputation among evacuees. Over time, Tashkent became a hub where Soviet artists – many of them Jewish – could continue their work, meet one another, and even flourish.
“Many of those who came to Central Asia were the cream of the Soviet intelligentsia, including musicians. They wanted to engage immediately with the local musical scene. Performers got involved in theatres and conservatories. Classical musicians, in particular, became interested in local instruments: dombras and others, and even experimented with adapting them to Tchaikovsky and Beethoven,” Shternshis says.
“Yiddish writers who were evacuated were very productive. Some even received bread rations for their writing, as members of local writers’ unions, a privileged category. I would say that Tashkent during the war became one of the world centers of Yiddish culture, if not the leading one. There were many Yiddish-speaking Jews who spoke the language openly and participated in literary evenings and cultural gatherings.”
Not all Jews who arrived in Central Asia in 1941 came from Belarus, Ukraine, or Russia. Some came from Poland. Daniela Gerson, a journalist and professor, traced her family’s story in the book The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II.
The bottom class
In 1939, when Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin divided Poland, Gerson’s grandparents left their hometown of Zamość in eastern Poland for the Soviet Union. But they refused to accept Soviet citizenship, and as a punishment were sent to a Gulag. What seemed like a tragedy at the time ultimately saved their lives.
In 1941, when Stalin joined the anti-Nazi alliance, Polish citizens imprisoned in Gulags were granted amnesty. Many joined the army of Władysław Anders, which traveled through Central Asia and Iran to Italy to fight against Nazi Germany. Among them were Jews, including Menachem Begin, who would later become Israel’s prime minister.
Gerson’s grandparents were among those freed from a Gulag in Siberia.
“These were Polish Jews who were granted amnesty in August 1941. They had the option to move on, and many – hundreds of thousands – went to Central Asia,” Gerson says.
“Another reason people went was a book called City of Bread, published in the 1920s and translated into Yiddish. It described Tashkent as a place full of food. After enduring extreme hardship, people believed they would find abundance there. What they found was very different.”
Gerson’s grandparents initially hoped to cross into Iran and continue to Palestine, but Soviet authorities prevented them from leaving.
“My grandmother always described the melons: you’ve never seen such melons, and the grapes. For Polish Jews arriving from Siberia, this abundance of fruit was astonishing. But alongside it, people were dying quickly from disease.”
Disease was widespread, and despite the fruit, hunger remained severe. Polish Jews were at the very bottom of the social hierarchy, the poorest of the poor. They faced suspicion from Soviet authorities, who often viewed them as potential traitors. Over time, many began referring to themselves as “the Wanderers.”
“The Soviets called them bezhenets: refugee. But many Polish Jews used a Yiddish term meaning ‘wanderers.’ In their memoirs, they connected this to the biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt, the idea of being freed, but not truly free. They couldn’t leave the Soviet Union and often moved from place to place without a permanent home,” Gerson says.
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Like many others, Gerson’s family went to Tashkent but were not allowed to stay due to overcrowding.
“Tashkent was overflowing with people. Some accounts describe people dying in the streets. My wife’s uncle described hamburgers made from people. Other scholars say that did not happen, but nobody disputes that there was incredible hunger,” she says.
Gerson’s family eventually found a room in a Tatar household in Juma, not far from Samarkand, where they stayed until 1946. During that time, two relatives were imprisoned for black-market trading, and one of them died in custody. Most of the family, however, survived, and later returned to Europe.
Iya’s family had more luck. In Stalinabad – today’s Dushanbe - uncle Salomon, who headed a surgical department, secured a job for Iya’s father. They lived near the city’s main avenue and socialised with members of the local elite, many of whom were also evacuees from Europe.
Iya would sneak into the opera house to watch performances for free, and she finally returned to school after missing two years. But she did not remember this period fondly. Her uncle’s family, in particular, was cruel to the young girl.
“They would sit me down at the table, and he would say to Tusya, ‘Tusya, let’s calculate how much this bowl of soup costs.’ Or Aunt Genya, his wife, would wake me up early in the morning, and we’d go to the market. She was afraid of dysentery, and afraid to try the food herself, so I tasted everything for her,” Iya says.
“I was like Cinderella there. I tried everything first, and then I helped her carry the bags.”
Life goes on
When Kyiv was liberated in 1943, Uncle Salomon’s hospital was scheduled to be transferred back to Ukraine, and with it, Iya and her family.
According to estimates, around 90 per cent of Jews who were evacuated to the Soviet Union survived the war. This contrasts sharply with only about 1–2 per cent of Polish Jews who survived in German-occupied territory.
And yet, this story is not widely known.
“This was something I had always wondered about. I knew my grandparents had survived in the Soviet Union, but I didn’t see that story represented. It’s not something taught in Hebrew school. During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, fighting against Nazi Germany. In that context, there was little appetite to scrutinise Stalin’s actions,” Gerson explains.
“People didn’t want to hear about what Stalin had done, not during the war, and not immediately after. In the United States, he was seen as ‘Uncle Joe’ and was even named Time’s Man of the Year twice. After the war, that began to change with the Cold War. But for Polish Jews who wanted to immigrate to the United States, their time in the Soviet Union became a liability. It could prevent them from entering the country, so many avoided talking about it.”
But there was another reason for their silence, Gerson says. Commemoration focused so heavily on those who had been murdered by the Nazis that survivors often felt a responsibility to tell that story instead. Their own one remained in the background.
While many Jewish evacuees left Uzbekistan after the war, some chose to stay. They had built lives there: jobs, communities, and a sense of stability. For them, there was no compelling reason to leave.
Inna Davidovna Kogan will turn 70 this year. Her family arrived in Uzbekistan in the late 1930s, though she is not certain exactly when. They had fled pogroms in western Ukraine and, for reasons unknown, chose Tashkent as their destination.
“I don’t know, maybe it was chance, maybe fate that brought them here. My father used to say he arrived barefoot. I don’t know why, but perhaps it was meant to be. They were given housing and work here,” she tells me over the phone.
Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when emigration to Israel became possible, her family decided to stay in Tashkent.
“When the Soviet era ended, it became possible to leave for your historical homeland, Israel. But my father said, ‘I have three homelands: Ukraine, where I was born and where my family is buried but I cannot return there; it is like an unhealed wound. My homeland betrayed me,” Kogan recalls.
“I will stay here, in Uzbekistan, because this country and its people took us in. They fed us, clothed us, gave us shelter, and treated us with kindness. I will not betray my second homeland.’”
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