Operation Bridge ‘0’

zorard.wordpress.com 1 year ago

The majority of conscious Poles heard about the Operation Bridge from 1990 to 1992. It was based on the fact that Poland and specifically Warsaw served as a transfer point for Jews leaving the USSR (after Russia) to Israel. They arrived in Warsaw by trains, passed the last identity check and received the appropriate papers and then boarded the El Al aircraft at Okęta Airport in Warsaw. It was for the protection of these judaic migrants that the GROM unit was created, which later became famous. As part of this operation, about 40,000 Jews left for Israel through Poland.

Looking at rabbi's biographies available on the American pages of Chabad-Lubacz, I found traces of another mass exodus of Jews from the USSR through Poland – something I called myself "Operation Most Zero".

Here. Menachem Schneerson's biography reference:

Lemberg is evidently a lion. For any reason Jews reluctantly usage both the Polish and Ukrainian versions of the name of this city.

== sync, corrected by elderman ==

In Russia, Hasidic men from Chabad mobilized to organize an illegal mass exodus [Jews] through the border town of Lviv. With the aid of activists Chabad from Kazakhstan, Rebbetzin Chana [mother rebe Menachema] went to Moscow, then to Lviv, where she received false Polish papers and was smuggled across the border.

The historical background is this: erstwhile Comrade Stalin formed the borders of Poland (i.e. PRL) obtaining for her from Germany their east provinces (so-called "Recovered Lands") it was planned to decision the nations to the west. Germans were displaced from Silesia and Pomerania, and Poles from what we called "draws" (in fact the remains of the erstwhile east estates of the Republic of Poland) and what the USSR took after 17 September 1939. This action was called ‘repatriation’, although in fact it was massive, mostly forced displacement.

Let's quote Wikipedia:

During the period of the first mass displacement action, culminating in the second half of 1945 and the first half of 1946, from the western areas of the Ukrainian SRR (before the war of the south-eastern areas of the Second Republic of Poland) between 778 and 792.7 1000 people were resettled, including 752.1 1000 Poles, 30.3 1000 Jews and 10.3 1000 mainly Ukrainians (family members) and Roma. 652,000 people were displaced from the east Galicia, including about 618.2 1000 Poles, 24.5 1000 Jews and over 9.2,000 Ukrainians, of whom 104,446 from Lviv, including 98,865 Poles, 3349 Jews and 2232 others. In full 97.3 1000 Poles, 269.5 1000 from Lviv and 251.5 1000 Poles from Tarnopolskie voivodship left the Stanisławskie voivodship. 140,700 people, including no more than 133,9 1000 Poles, over 5.8 1000 Jews and nearly 1000 others, were displaced from the Volyn Voivodeship. In addition, about 6 1000 Poles left Romania. The population of Poland from this area settled mainly in the west of the Silesian Voivodeship and in the Wrocław Voivodeship.
Wikipedia "Expatriation of Poles from east Borders 1944–1946"

So the situation was that whoever could identify himself with papers confirming that he was a Pole could catch a train that was being transported "repatriated" to Poland – from Lviv these trains, of course, went to Krakow. specified papers could be pre-war – and thus issued by the Second Republic – identity cards and passports.

The situation was exploited by Jews who wanted to leave the USSR. On a mass scale they downloaded to Lviv, where secret judaic cells forged papers turning Jews into Poles. The procedure took place on specified a scale that it is hard to believe that the local NKVD and the russian militia did not know about it. However, at least in part, I think that as a consequence of bribes and possibly even any secret directive from office (the ZSRR supported the creation of Israel). It was only at the very end of the operation that any of its organizers were arrested, and the last train with refugees was stopped, and most of the Jews who were driving it were well controlled.

It is worth noting that, of course, Jews who lived in this area before the war and someway survived the German business period (in Ukraine Jews were liquidated peculiarly intensively with the active and enthusiastic participation of Ukrainians) and were citizens of the Second Polish Republic could leave officially as Jews had papers confirming Polish citizenship. False papers were required by all the another Jews who left the USSR at that time and came from different parts of this large state.

According to the sources to which I reached, there were at least 2 larger judaic organizations dealing with the forgery of Polish papers and inserting judaic families into the “repatriation” trains to Poland. 1 was a Zionist organization – that is, secular – called B’richa, it even has its website on Wikipedia. The second is the grid organized by Chabad-Lubacz, which is mentioned in both the passage mentioned above about how his parent escaped from the USSR and another sources coming from Chabad.

The Hebrew Wikipedia website about B’rich gives another alternatively interesting version of how Jews left the USSR claiming to be Poles:

At the end of planet War II, an order was received from the ultimate russian Presidency, according to which all soldier in the Polish People's Army, as well as all activist for the liberation of Poland, has the right to receive CitizenstEnglish. judaic delegations appeared 1 on one, with members dressed in military uniforms and holding false certificates, impersonating returning military personnel to bring families from Central Asia.
Source (machine translation)

In another words, in addition to the method of fabricating civilian papers described in the Hasidic memoirs of Chabad, there was besides a method “for military” – dressing up LWP uniforms and forging papers proving service in these branches to get the chance to go to Poland.

There were most likely many judaic “nets” operating at the same time – so outside B’richa and Chabad there were besides another groups organizing the smuggling of Jews from the USSR.

It is worth noting that fleeing Jews were afraid not only of the NKVD and the russian army, but besides of "blood-eating Poles". More specifically, Zionist B’richa's representatives “terrorized” Hasidics who wanted to get off the train in the field (religious Jews cannot travel on the Sabbath, so they wanted to “wait” until the next day just in the field):

Source

Of course, no “blood-eating Poles” appeared. As you can see, myths about how Poles execution Jews were spread already at the time – yes, it is possible that many of the Jews who drove through Poland at the time remembered this thanks to caring Zionist guardians.

Further ways of Jews after smuggling them to Poland were most frequently about crossing the border illegally with the Czech Republic and then entering the American business zone, for example, in Austria. From there they continued through the transitional camps, mostly to Israel. There most likely was another change of identity somewhere along the way – Jews from Poles became Jews again, possibly this time “Polish Jews”, and thus those who survived the war in Poland.

Source

When searching for the résumés of rabbis, 1 of its participants in this escape can see that not all of them went to Israel.

Regardless of where the smuggled via Poland Jews from the USSR yet hit the key problem is What was the scale of this Exodus?

W/g of the page about B’rich on Wikipedia was this:

According to Bricha data, between August 1945 and the end of June 1946, 46,000 Jews benefited from this organization in the emigration from Poland. In turn, it is estimated that only in July and August 1946 Poland left 73,000 people, most of them thanks to Bricha's help. A full of about 170 000 Polish (and 250 000 European) Jews emigrated to Palestine with Bricha’s help

These figures do not match due to the fact that 73.000 + 46.000 = 119.00 and not 170.000, but it can be assumed that there were around 130 thousand. In any case, the question arises as to what part of it were Polish Jews in quotes, and thus smuggled from the USSR on false Polish documents.

Interestingly, the Polish Wikipedia website about B’rich does not say anything about it, but the Hebrew version most mentions this aspect of the case without giving any figures. The English version besides speaks of 250 1000 in full of which 100 1000 left Poland in 3 months after the Kielce pogrom. And remember, only those who were smuggled by the secular Zionist B’rich – we know nothing about the number of Hasids, but the general message that exodus was “great” ("massive"). In another places, there are “hundreds” of people who have thus left the USSR:

One thing is clear – the number of Jews who left Lviv Voivodeship was importantly higher than 24.5 thousand. Jews officially registered as specified in data provided on the Polish Wikipedia website devoted to these resettlements.

I think it can be assumed that the full number of Jews who, with the aid of a secular network (a B’rich or Habrich) either with the aid of Chabad-Lubacz or yet another smaller groups left the USSR via Lviv as “Poles” was between 80,000 and 130 1000 people. So the smuggled Jews were from 1 3rd to half from 269 1000 Poles officially resettled then from the “Livovian Voivodeship”! So it was this more than twice as many Jews How much during the 1990s “Operation Most”.

It is rather interesting that in Poland nobody practically wrote about this case and I learned about it by accident thanks to the parties of the American Chabad-Lubacz. If it was written in Poland, it was about the departure from post-war Poland of alleged "Polish Jews", i.e. those who before the war were bound by citizenship and/or residence. The mass thread – as judaic sources say – forgeries of the identities of the russian repatriates are not known or explored (see Polish sources at the end of the text) as well as the function of Chabad-Lubacz (although it must be admitted that in quantitative terms more Jews had transferred B’rich).

Finally, I have no “pretense” with the Jews that they fled the USSR. Anyone who has had the chance to escape from this "communist paradise" as we will most likely shortly escape from the leftist "parallel" which is becoming increasingly the European Union. However, it seems interesting to me that in our historical memory it was not recorded somehow, that about 1/7 displaced in 1945-46 Poles from the east were actually Jews, who mostly went further.

This article, of course, simply outlines the subject. I could usage a more serious historical survey that I can't do. First, 1 would request to know Hebrew, and most likely Yiddish, in order to be able to scope out to sources, especially the memories and publications that appeared in Israel about this exodus. And secondly, I do not want this page to become a "Jewish bloc" (and I inactive plan at least 1 more entry on this subject).

If anyone wants to take this job, I'm dropping off investigation topics:

A more precise determination of the scale of the illegal (so-called secret) exodus of Jews from the USSR in 1945-46, and thus what percent of Poles leaving was actually Jews with false papers.
How many went to Israel and how many to the United States and elsewhere.
Establishing what happened in Vilnius (the second place from which mass transports of Poles displaced to the west came).
Finding out what the function played in this russian service (maybe something can be dug up in archives in Ukraine and Russia?) – due to the fact that it may be that the “close-eye” observed by the refugees is the consequence not only of bribes but besides of a top-down warrant.

Dodatkowe źsources: