You think there were only 10 Georgian Jews in the whole USSR? :)
Sure, nobody is really "indigenous." That's why the word was in quotation marks. My point was that they moved into the area relatively recently.
There are so few Karaim listed (apart from them always being a very small group) because many/most emigrated to Europe, especially Germany, following the Revolution, since they tended to be White (pro-Tsarist, I mean). (Interestingly, they tried their "we're Jewish by religion, not by blood" strategy again with the Nazis, again successfully. The Einsatzgruppen would kill Karaim occasionally in Ukraine and Lithuania my mistake, however, despite the fact that there was an order against it.)
Infallible Wiki writes:
Russian Karaites During the 18th century, Russian Karaites spread many myths externally, which freed them from various anti-Semitic laws that affected other Jews. Avraham Firkovich helped establish these ideas by referring to the tombstones in Crimea that bear inscriptions stating that those buried were descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Other deflections included claiming to be among those Jews with a Khazar origin, or claiming that Karaites were otherwise not strictly Jewish descended. These actions were intended to convince the Russian Czar that Karaite ancestors could not have killed Jesus; that thus their descendants were free of familial guilt (which was an underlying reason or pretext given at that time for anti-Semitic laws). In 1897, the Russian census counted 12,894 Karaites in the Russian Empire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaite_Judaism
During the Holocaust Their status under Russian imperial rule bore beneficial fruits for the Karaims decades later. In 1934, the heads of the Karaite community in Berlin asked the Nazi authorities to exempt them from the regulations; on the basis of their legal status in Russia. The Reich Agency for the Investigation of Families determined that from the standpoint of German law, the Karaites were not to be considered Jews. The letter from the Reichsstelle fur Sippenforschung gave the official ruling in a letter which stated:
The Karaite sect should not be considered a Jewish religious community within the meaning of paragraph 2, point 2 of the First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law. However, it cannot be established that Karaites in their entirety are of blood-related stock, for the racial categorization of an individual cannot be determined without ... his personal ancestry and racial biological characteristics
– [4]
This ruling set the tone for how the Nazis dealt with the Karaite community in Eastern Europe.
At the same time, the Nazis had serious reservations towards the Karaites. SS Obergruppenfuhrer Gottlob Berger wrote on November 24, 1944:
Their Mosaic religion is unwelcome. However, on grounds of race, language and religious dogma... Discrimination against the Karaites is unacceptable, in consideration of their racial kinsmen [Berger was here referring to the Crimean Tatars]. However, so as not to infringe the unified anti-Jewish orientation of the nations led by Germany, it is suggested that this small group be given the opportunity of a separate existence (for example, as a closed construction or labor battalion)...
Despite their exempt status, confusion led to initial massacres. German soldiers who came across Karaims in Russia during the initial phase of Operation Barbarossa, not aware of their legal status under German law, attacked them; 200 were killed at Babi Yar alone. German allies such as the Vichy Republic began to require the Karaites to register as Jews, but eventually granted them non-Jewish status upon being instructed by Berlin.[5]
On interrogation, Ashkenazi and Krymchak rabbis in Crimea told the Germans that the Karaims were not Jews, in an effort to spare the Karaite community the fate of their Rabbanite neighbors.[6] The record of the Karaite community during the war is a checkered one; while many Karaims risked their lives to hide Jews, and in some cases claimed that Jews were members of their community, others joined German auxiliary units such as the Tatar Legion, Ostturkische Waffenverband, an SS unit that included Crimean Tatars and other Turkic peoples. According to a letter dated September 27, 1944, penned by Chancellor Gerhard Klopfer, an estimated 500-600 Crimean Karaims were fighting in the Wehrmacht, Waffen SS, and Tatar Legion. Klopfer asked that until such a time as the exact racial origin of the Karaites could be determined, a list of all members of the sect be diligently kept. Many of the Karaims were recruited for labor battalions.[7]
Karaim cemetery in Warsaw, established in 1890.In Vilna and Troki, the Nazis forced Karaite Hakham Seraya Shapshal to produce a list of the members of the community, which allowed the Nazis to quickly discover Jews bearing false Karaite papers. Though he did his best, not every Karaylar Jew was saved by Shapshal's list.
Having suffered a massacre at the hands of the Stalinists, in Lutsk the Karaims generally cooperated with the anti-Jewish activities of their Nazi liberators. The historian W.P. Green describes the situation in Lutsk thus:
[T]he local Karaites acted as liaisons between the Germans and the Lutsk Judenrat. Jacob Eilbert, a survivor of the Lutsk Ghetto, testified to the Karaite anti-Jewish activity. He recounted that the Karaites would enter the ghetto and beat up women and children. On other occasions they would extort huge sums of money from the Lutsk Judenrat. Eilbert also testified to the fact that the Karaites assisted the Germans and Ukrainians in the liquidation of the Lutsk Ghetto in August 1942. My research, however, indicates that the strained Karaite-Jewish relations described by Eilbert appear to be an exception. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Karaites
--- On Sat, 7/19/08, moominek at aol.com <moominek at aol.com> wrote:
>
> What is "indigenous" in eastern europe,
> especially in the southern, forest free areas, were all
> the riders from asia went trough?
>
> About the jews here the figures of the 1937soviet census:
>
> Jews: 2 669 147
> crimean jews: 6 104
> mountain jews: 14 410
> grusinian jews: 10
> central asian jews. 25 437
>
>
>
> for completness. Karaim: 3 464
>
> The first group - Jews without special features - is the
> Y-speaking minority, counted only in the soviet union of
> 1937 - without the 3,5 Million eastern jews in the Polish
> Republic (in the borders of the between-the-wars-period,
> including southern Lithuania, western Belarus and western
> Ucraine).
> The starting point was a allegedly zionist myth: In the
> history of Zionism the yiddish speaking eastern jews played
> a important role, the small groups in the south of russian
> empire did not.
>
> There is broad consensus that Yiddish is a linguistically
> german language
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish_language). Yiddish
> written in latin letters is not too difficult to understand
> for germans.
>
> Of course there were quite a lot of differences in the
> Yiddish, especially in spooken language. But thats quite
> normal. As late as 1934 a uncle of mine moved from Kiel to
> Rostock in northern germany, only 140 kilometers eastward
> in the core of the "lower german language"
> district (lower german = "Plattdütsch", all the
> g
> erman areas wich did not take part in the second german
> sound shift). But the children in his class were laughing
> at him and did not understand, what he said. Only via
> official german (Hochdeutsch) communication was possible.
> The establishment of standardized language is a part of the
> building of a national state. And without intense
> communication it may take quite a lot of time to establish
> the standard in every corner of a country.
>
> Sebastian
>
>
>
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