The Yakut Tragedies

Shmuel Green and his mother Pesya lived at the beginning of their exile in the Katun Meat and Milk Sovkhoz in the Staro-Borzinsky District of Altai Territory. Several Jewish and Lithuanian families had been brought there with them.

During the summer of 1942, the punitive organs of the Soviet power redeported a significant number of the special settlers from Altai Territory to Yakutia (Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), which is on the shores of the Arctic Ocean with severe climate where it was extremely difficult to communicate with other parts of the country. Apparently the NKVD officials believed that the deportees from Lithuania were living "too well" in Altai Territory. They decided to make their lives more difficult by sending them into a bleak exile where death was quite possible.

It was a long way to Yakutia. At first, the deportees were transported to a transfer point on the Trans Siberian Railroad by special freight trains. Then they were all taken by trucks to the port of Osetrovo (Irkutsk Province) on the Lena River. The deportees then embarked on steamboats and sailed north towards the mouth of the Lena River. The armed NKVD sentinels supervised the special settlers throughout their journey and treated them with excessive cruelty. The journey into new exile was unbearable due to crowded steamboats, lack of hygiene, noise, and shortage of food. People were hungry and sick, and they nearly starved. Some of special settlers became so weak and emaciated that they died along the way.

Shmuel Green and his mother, Pesya, were taken to Bykov Mys (the cape of Bykov) where the Lena River flows into the Laptev Sea. They were settled in a fishing settlement attached to the Trofimov fish-factory. Some Jewish and Lithuanian families were also settled there along with the Greens. Upon arrival, all newcomers were immediately required to register at the special commandant’s office of the NKVD.

The life of the special settlers was very hard due to the severe conditions of the Far North. They were not able to withstand the severe winter cold with the temperatures dropping as low as 55 degrees Celsius below zero (67 degrees Fahrenheit below zero). Many deportees perished from the extreme cold. Shmuel Green was an eyewitness to the death of a female deportee from Klaipeda Bidokler, who froze to death in his presence so rapidly that no one could save her.

During the short arctic summer months, the upper layer of permafrost soil thawed and revealed tundra covered with stunted vegetation consisting mainly of reindeer moss. Unpaved country roads became axle deep in mud, making movement almost impossible. Only special cross-country vehicles were used for transporting goods and people, but these vehicles were rare in the villages where the special settlers lived.

Essential food and supplies for the locals and deported people were carried by water during navigation periods to the port of Tiksi. That port was not too far away from the fishing settlement where the Greens lived. The special settlers received ration cards to get scanty food rations.

The special settlers did not have warm clothes, worked incredibly hard, starved, and suffered from scurvy and dystrophy. Various diseases of many deportees became aggravated during the cold weather which led to many deaths among the settlers.

After arriving in the Far North, Shmuel Green worked on unloading rafts of timber that were floated down the Lena River to its mouth. During the winter months, the workers had to pick out logs from "ice captivity" with crowbars and drag them on to the snow-covered riverbank. Later Shmuel worked as the loader, and only a few years later he managed to get lighter work in a warehouse.

The special settlers from Yakutia could not send the food parcels to prisoners of the camps of Kraslag, and Pesya Green was very worried that she could not help her husband out. Later she wrote a letter to Rachel Mirkin asking her for help with sending food parcels from Altai Territory to her husband Yoel in the camp of Kraslag. The Mirkins kept their promises. Yoel Green received two parcels, but the third one came back with a note, "The addressee has left." It was delivered too late. Yoel Green had died in one of the camps of Kraslag.

Velvl Yanovsky and his mother were among the deportees from Altai Territory. Initially they were deported from Ukmerge to the Karpov Sovkhoz of Soloneshensky District, and then they were transferred to Yakutia with other special settlers. The Yanovsky family, Hirshl Zack, his mother, and other fellow countrymen who were deported for the second time went ashore from a steamboat in the port of Olekminsk. They were taken by trucks to the wild Yakut taiga, more than 700 kilometers journey on rough dirt roads from the Lena River. Deported people were brought to the settlement attached to the Sosnovy Bor timber industry enterprise where Velvl, Hirshl, and other young men started working in taiga as lumberjacks. After some time, they moved to the new settlement on the Delgeisky plot of the same timber enterprise where they continued doing similar hard work.

Esther Reznik and her children had tragic fate. They were originally deported from Lithuania into the village of Smolensky and then with other special settlers were transferred to Yakutia. On the way there, Esther’s daughter Simkha fell seriously ill due to starvation, lack of sanitation, and the generally intolerable conditions. When Simkha’s health condition became critical, the officers of the NKVD convoy group ordered the mooring of the steamboat on the bank of the Lena River not far from the mouth of the river. The Rezniks were disembarked at a very small settlement and Simkha was taken to the hospital. Unfortunately, there was no medicine available to treat her and she was not able to eat. She needed intravenous feeding to support her vital body functions, but of course, the hospital could not provide that. The doctor decided to support her life with a "nutrient solution" of sugar and water, but there was no sugar at the hospital either. Esther gave all of the sugar from the family’s rations to the hospital depriving her other two children of sugar. Certainly, such "treatment" did not work, and 14-year-old girl passed away after four months of suffering.

Shortly after that, both of Esther’s children Joseph and Sarah contracted typhus. Sarah miraculously survived, but her 12-year-old brother Joseph passed away. Shmuel Green helped to bury him in the permafrost.

Soon, Esther’s husband Velvl died in Stalin’s camp of Kraslag. He could not bear the terrible conditions of imprisonment and Esther was not able to help him with anything from Yakutia.

After awhile, Esther Reznik passed away too, and Sarah Reznik remained alone in exile. She lived in Yakutia for 19 years.

Many people were intrigued by the peculiar twists and turns of the life of Pesya Green. She moved from the settlement at Bykov Mys to the city of Yakutsk (capital of Yakutia) getting permission from the commandant of the local special commandant’s office after the death of her husband Yoel in the camp of Kraslag. However, she also could not put up with the unbearable conditions of life in exile there. And some time after World War II ended, she ran away from Yakutsk not telling anything about her plans even to her son Shmuel. Pesya was able somehow in the postwar period without any documents and permission to get through the country to Vilnius and hide there. The office of Internal Affairs started searching for her everywhere. Investigators interrogated her son, questioned many of her acquaintances in different parts of the country, and threatened and assaulted them. However, nobody knew where Pesya was. Almost two years later she was revealed by pure accident in Vilnius and convoyed back to Yakutsk. However, a year later, she ran away again to Minsk to her distant relatives having no documents that proved her identity and permission to travel. She learned that one of her old friends, who had left for Mexico in the first third of 20th century, lost his wife. Pesya wrote him a letter, and in response her elderly friend asked her to marry him. After receiving her consent to marriage, he sent Pesya a notarized invitation and other documents necessary to obtain a visa to Mexico. Based on those documents, she received her permission from OVIR (the Office of Visas and Registration) to leave the Soviet Union for Mexico as a fiancée. She married her friend shortly after arrival in Mexico. Her new husband was a very wealthy man. After a while, he passed away leaving a large inheritance for Pesya. Pesya then moved to the United States, but shortly afterwards, she left for Israel where she remarried. When Pesya came to Israel she gave a gift to her son Shmuel, in the form of a very expensive German car. Pesya passed away of extreme old age in Israel.

When the special registration for all deportees from Lithuania was canceled, people got new passports and started leaving Yakutia. Shmuel Green returned to Lithuania in 1958 and managed to settle in Vilnius. He did not have a profession and was employed in low-skilled jobs. Shmuel Green repatriated to Israel in 1973 where he married and now lives with his wife in the city of Herzliya. He worked in Israel at several different places before retirement where he proved himself to be a highly valuable employee.

Velvl Yanovsky came back to Lithuania in 1961, but he was not allowed to live in the capital of the Republic, so he settled in the little town of Lentvaris not far from Vilnius. The Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Lithuanian SSR, Yustas Paletskis, helped Velvl Yanovsky and his family move to Vilnius because Paletskis knew Velvl’s father Reb Yitzhak as a compassionate, generous, and kind man. Before the establishment of the Soviet power in Lithuania, Reb Yitzhak was actively engaged in a broad range of philanthropic, charitable and civic improvement efforts. He provided money, food, and clothing for the poor and needy. Reb Yitzhak also supplied prisons with food for the inmates, including Yustas Paletskis, who underwent arrests and imprisonment during the repressive Lithuanian police regime of Antanas Smetona (a former president of independent prewar Lithuania). Velvl Yanovsky and his family repatriated to Israel in February 1972. He worked there as a bookkeeper for a long time before his retirement. Velvl Yanovsky lives with his family in the city of Arad. He remembers my grandfather Reb Hirshl Zeldov as a person of great decency and towering integrity, with whom Velvl’s father prayed together in a synagogue in Ukmerge. Velvl was happy that Zeldov’s grandson managed to survive and shows an interest in the fate of the Lithuanian Jews.

Sarah Reznik came back to Lithuania in 1960 and settled in Vilnius. She got married there and took her husband’s last name Sher. Sarah and her husband repatriated to Israel in 1973.

Unfortunately, only a few Lithuanian Jews whose families were deported to Yakutia managed to come back alive from the camps of Kraslag and the Yakut exile. I wish good health, long years of life, and all the best for all my fellow countrymen who were subjected to repressions and were lucky enough to survive.

The people who died there need to be remembered. They will live forever in our memory!