Nazis Planned To Deport Jews To Russia

Russian historian Pavel Polian found a February 1940 letter from Yevgeny Chekmenyov of Moscow’s Department of Resettlement to Viatcheslav Molotov, then foreign minister and head of the Soviet government, mentioning letters from Berlin and Vienna in which German officials approached Moscow with the idea of shipping all Jews in the German Reich to Birobidjan — a Siberian area that Stalin had designated as a Jewish autonomous region — and western Ukraine. Chekmenyov was requesting Molotov’s advice on how to respond to the German request, but mentions that he thinks the USSR already has enough Jews of its own. Polian could not find two enclosures mentioned in the letter, but believes they were written by Adolf Eichmann and Alois Brunner, who were responsible for Jewish immigration in Berlin and Vienna, respectively.