When Legal Procedures Put People Outside the Law

Malka grew up in an observant Jewish family. She attended school and, after completing her studies there, continued her education at home by her parents’ decision. We may assume that this education was of a high standard: Malka’s father, Yosel, was a shochet, a ritual slaughterer — a role that required special training and a serious examination before the religious authorities. In the community, the shochet was one of the most important religious figures after the rabbi, and the position carried great responsibility.

From her home in the town of Mir, in Nowogródek Voivodeship, Malka regularly travelled to Vilna for work; in her free time, she devoted herself to her family. But when she came to Vilna once again, on 22 October 1939, she could no longer return. As Malka herself put it, this happened “because of the war” — or, more precisely, because the borders around her had changed.

To regularise her legal status, Malka first had to obtain refugee status — although she did not consider herself a refugee. She had regularly travelled to these places for work and had freely left when necessary. She had not fled a military threat; rather, she found herself outside the law because the geopolitical situation had changed.

Malka was granted refugee status in February 1940. The next step towards legalisation and freedom of movement was Soviet citizenship, required of those who found themselves in territories incorporated into the USSR. In late February 1941, she was granted citizenship. It appears that a Soviet passport was a condition for obtaining a visa to the United States; Malka applied for the visa without waiting for the citizenship decision. Why was she in such a hurry? Probably because the waiting time for a visa was more than eight months.

Perhaps also because rumours of the persecution of Jews were reaching her: the Second World War was already under way, and people around her were looking for ways to leave for somewhere safe.

She had someone to go to: her brother lived in the United States. When applying for citizenship and then for permission to leave, Malka concealed nothing from the security services. It might be tempting to see this as naivety: it was precisely because of her openness that she began to be persecuted. She could hardly have known that her entirely legal actions in the offices of OVIR, the Soviet visa and registration authority, would be interpreted as unlawful. Malka asked for permission to leave and stated that all the necessary documents were waiting for her in Moscow.

It was probably for this reason that she planned to reach the United States in transit across the entire USSR — via Vladivostok. How long would the journey have taken? It hardly matters: that route increased the distance between her and the war and the persecution of Jews in Europe.

Instead of allowing her to leave for her brother, the authorities decided to expel Malka from the Lithuanian SSR as a socially dangerous person. We do not know why the authorities preferred to keep a new citizen in the country while restricting her rights, rather than simply allow her to leave.

Did Malka ever reach her brother? Sadly, no. It is possible that she spent the last days of her life with her family. They all perished in Mir, the town that had been Malka’s home.

Text prepared by Anna Fomina on the basis of the archival case file concerning Malka Yeselevna Altschuller’s admission to Soviet citizenship and information from Yad Vashem.

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