Card file of Jewish Refugees in Tashkent

During WWII more than one million Jews from the former Soviet Union, including the recently annexed territories of Eastern Poland, 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, Tadzhikistan 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. This database is based on the card catalogue 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 catalogue consists of more than 250,000 cards stored in 193 catalogue boxes with a total number of ca. 339,250 evacuees who were registered by the Soviet authorities in February 1942.

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 within this collection. With the funding provided by USHMM, Professor Saidjon Kurbanov and his colleagues in Tashkent compiled database consisting of 152, 000 names of Jewish evacuees along with their digital images of 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 catalogue and database does 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.

Registration cards include the following information: 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.

Location names have not been standardized, and may vary in some cases from accepted spellings.

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