At the beginning of World War II, many thousands of Jews living in the western parts of the Soviet Unions—especially in the areas newly annexed from Poland and the Baltic states—found themselves exiled to Siberia or Central Asia. Thousands more fled or migrated to these areas voluntarily. In either case, they turned out to be fortunate, given the fate of their brethren who remained in the path of the Wehrmacht. Levi Bridges explores the traces of those Jews who found their way to Kyrgyzstan, a small, Muslim-majority former Soviet Socialist Republic nestled between Kazakhstan and China’s Xinjiang province. (Audio, 6 minutes.)
Read more on The World: https://theworld.org/media/2022-08-22/lost-jewish-cemeteries-bishkek