Nazi-occupied Poland

... One of the reasons many Polish Jews, in fleeing from the Nazis, were interested in reaching Bialystok was that 1} was easier to steal into this city than into other places. Moreover, once in Bialystok, there was not too much difficulty in crossing the border into the Soviet Union. The peasants who lived in border areas at that time profited financially from assisting the uninter- rupted flow of refugees in entering Russia. At first, frontier crossings were not too arduous. A short time after the war’s outbreak, however, the Soviet border guards, increasingly vigilant, succeeded in repelling ille- gal aliens back into Nazi-occupied Poland. It often occurred that the unsuccessful refugees, driven back across the border, were brutally beaten by Nazi soldiers for their attempt to leave German jurisdiction. When Bialystok was completely overrun by the Soviet Army on September 17, 1939, the influx of refu- ...