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Jewish Refugees in Tashkent

Introduction by Peter Landé

· Introduction
· The Database
· Acknowledgements
· Search the Database

This database contains information about 152,000 Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union who were evacuated to Tashkent (Uzbekistan) and then went to different localities in Uzbekistan in 1941-1942.

Introduction

During WWII, more than one million Jews from the former Soviet Union, including the recently annexed territories of Eastern Poland, the Baltic countries, Bessarabia, and northern Bukovina, were evacuated by the Soviet authorities or managed to escape on their own into the Soviet interior before German troops marched into their towns and villages.

A significant group of evacuees, including many Jewish families, arrived in Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tazhikistan, and Turkmenistan) in 1941-1942. The database of the Jewish evacuees and refugees presented below is the first attempt to draw together archival information concerning the fate of Jews in Central Asia during WWII.

Uzbekistan was only one of several Central Asian Soviet Republics, later independent countries, to which persons fled or were deported. Overall, it is estimated that over 1.1 million persons, about 70 percent Jewish, were evacuated to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrigzstan, Tadzhikistan, and many other places in the southeastern parts of the former Soviet Union. It is hoped that future research will yield the names of these currently anonymous Jews. One estimate is that as many as 300,000 of these deportees perished due to diseases and starvation, while others died as Soviet soldiers during WWII. However, none of them perished in the Holocaust and, indeed, many later emigrated to Palestine/Israel or elsewhere.

In 2004-2006, a group of local researchers of the Central Asia Research Project, lead by Professor Saidjon Kurbanov, selected and digitized 152,000 registration cards of Jewish evacuees and refugees available at the Central State Archives of the Republic of Uzbekistan in Tashkent. With the funding provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Professor Kurbanov and his colleagues in Tashkent compiled a database consisting of 152,000 names of Jewish evacuees, along with the digital images of their registration cards.

According to the information provided by Professor Kurbanov, registration cards list only those who came directly to Tashkent and then went to different localities in Uzbekistan. The card catalog and database do not include those who arrived at other localities within the Uzbek Republic, as well as significant number of Jews and non-Jews who came to Tashkent after February 1942 — including people joining their family in Uzbekistan from other parts of Soviet Union.

The original registration cards include the following information:

Front of Card:

Family name
Given name
Patronymic name (father’s given name)
Relationship to the head of household (wife, child, etc.)
Gender
Year of birth (in some cases age at the time of registration)
Place of birth
Profession (professional training)
Nationality (Jewish)
Former place of residence
Place of work before evacuation
Position
Current place of residence/address
Current place of work, name of the organization, position
Reference/registration number in the Registry books (list #, page #, and individual number on the list)

Reverse side of the card:
Dependents (children under age 16 living with the parents)

Family name
Given name
Patronymic name (father’s given name)
Relationship to the head of the household (son, daughter)
Year of birth (in some cases age at the time of registration)

Please note that in many cases some of the secondary fields in the original cards were not filled out during the registration process and remained blank.

The database

This database is based on the card catalog of evacuees stored in the Central State Archives of the Republic of Uzbekistan in Tashkent (RG- P-864, Registration and Reference Bureau of the Commissariat of Internal Affairs [NKVD] of the Uzbek SSR). The original card catalog consists of more than 250,000 cards stored in 193 catalog boxes, with a total number of about 339,250 evacuees who were registered by the Soviet authorities in February 1942.

The database includes the following fields, and the records are linked to the original cards. There are 151,966 records in the database.

Name — Family Name (Surname) and Given Name(s).
Patrynomic — The person's father's given name, in Russian patronymic form (otchestvo), i.e. "-ovich" or "-evich" added for a male (meaning "son of"), or "-ovna" or "-evna" added for a female (meaning "daughter of").
Birth Year — The person's year of birth.
Gender — The person's sex. "M" = male; "Zh" = female.
Town — Town from which this person was evacuated.
Oblast — Oblast (province) from which this person was evacuated. This is often just an abbreviation ("BSSR" = Belarusian SSR; "USSR" = Ukrainian SSR; "MSSR" = Moldovan SSR; "RSFSR" = Russian SSR), or an oblast name in its adjectival form.
Rayon — Rayon (district) from which this person was evacuated. This field is rarely filled in. When it is, the raion name is usually in its adjectival form.
ID # — Clicking on this ID number will bring up an image of the original card, in Cyrillic. See the table above for a translation of the fields.

Acknowledgements

This database of Jewish evacuees and refugees in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, is the first attempt to draw together archival information concerning the fate of Jews in Central Asia during WWII.

The information contained in this database was made available through the efforts of Michael Haley-Goldman of the Registry of Survivors of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

In addition, thanks to JewishGen, Inc. for providing the website and database expertise to make this database accessible. Special thanks to Susan King, Warren Blatt, and Michael Tobias for their continued contributions to Jewish genealogy. Particular thanks to the Research Division headed by Joyce Field and to Nolan Altman, coordinator of Holocaust files.

Peter Landé
April 2007

Searching the Database

This database is searchable via JewishGen's Holocaust Database.