Young Polish Jewish refugees study in a Vilna Yeshiva alongside letter from Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz to Joseph Hyman, JDC Executive Director

The USSR-German Pact of August 23, 1939, brought Soviet dominance to the Baltic area and on October 10, 1939, Vilna was transferred to the Lithuanian Republic. Lithuania was one of the countries that accepted Jewish refugees from Poland and elsewhere. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) aided these refugees working through the local Jewish social welfare organizations. After the Nazi entry into Poland in September 1939, during 1940-41, over 10,000 Polish Jewish refugees fled to Lithuania, among them the rabbis and student bodies of entire yeshivas. JDC provided assistance to these refugees in their flight from Nazism and in Lithuania. Rabbi Kalmanowitz, President of the Mirer Yeshiva, which originated in Mir, Poland, penned this letter thanking Joseph C. Hyman, Executive Director of the JDC, for his role in the escape of 300 scholars from the Mirrer Yeshiva in Vilna. During 1940-41, thousands of Polish Jewish refugees in Lithuania, among them the rabbis and student bodies of entire yeshivas, fled eastward across Siberia to Japan. After Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II, JDC assisted the refugees to move from Kobe, Japan to other temporary or permanent haven such as Shanghai. JDC subsidized their travel expenses.