The project deals with the biggest group of Polish-Jewish survivors, about 230,000 people, who spent the war as refugees in the Soviet Union. The project focuses on the geographical and spatial experiences and aspects of this story. Using tools from Digital Humanities, Naama Seri-Levi will analyze and map the flight and exile routes of the refugees and deportees from Poland toward the Soviet Union and within it during WWII for the first time, by examining personal and familial narratives appearing in questionnaires, early and late testimonies, and memoirs found in archival materials and other sources written immediately after the war and onward. By visualizing the geographics of this experience, the goal of this project is to create an open-access map that will reveal the vast dispersion of these refugees throughout the Soviet Union.

The project is led by Dr. Naama Seri-Levi.