The Refugees outside Ukraine

Abstract

This chapter identifies the two main directions of flight during the Khmelnytsky uprising. One was westward, across the Vistula River, to the large settled communities of Little Poland and Great Poland. The other was northward into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In both places, the sudden influx of large numbers of refugees, most of whom were destitute, posed a series of problems to those bodies that administered Jewish life. The challenges that had to be met were dealt with on the regional and local levels. The first can be seen most clearly in the responses of Lithuanian Jewry to the refugee issue, the second in those of the Kraków community.