Polish–Jewish relations during the occupation of Lithuania were good,with the exception of tragic incidents, which took place between 28 and 31 October 1939 in Vilna. Anti-Jewish riots which occurred then had complexcauses. There had been rumours that the price of bread would rise and that Jewish bakeries would be closed.344 The Jews were accused of an overly enthu-siastic send-off for the Russians leaving the city; reportedly, about 3,000young Jews went with them. The NKVD sources (Tsanava’s reports) mentiononly 257 applications of Vilna Jews and Belarusians asking for permissionto go to Belarus.
Local order services were unable to control the situation, and Soviettroops from the garrison in Nowa Wilejka had to intervene. About 40 Jews,mainly young people, were injured, and 66 participants in the incidents (including 20 Jews) were arrested.
In September 1939, Vilna became an asylum for huge masses of refugees from central Poland. Since 27 October, it was possible to reach the city from the territories occupied by Soviet troops without problems. By 2 December,more than 18,000 people had found refuge there, mostly men. Most of them were Poles (7,700) and Jews (6,800). In January 1940, the number of refugees increased to 25,000–27,000. The 1940 secret report for the Polish government-in-exile in London entitled “The Work of the Committee for Refugees”345 stated that by 10 January 1940, the Committee had registered 16,500 people, including 7,000 Jews, and that the Jewish community supported an addi-tional 3,000 refugees. Also quoted were the estimates of the newspaper Kurier Wileński, which mentioned 25,000 refugees. In March, there were supposedly as many as 36,000 (according to the JDC statistics, there were about 14,000 Jewish refugees; in July 1940, just over 11,000 were officially registered). Intotal, about 80,000 Jews lived in Vilna at that time (with a population of just over 210,000), while 108,000 lived in the entire District of Vilna.346
