Partisans and Soldiers: Themes of Gender and the Commemoration Of
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University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations May 2019 Partisans and Soldiers: Themes of Gender and the Commemoration of Jewish Resistance in the Soviet Union During World War II Taylor Marie Dews University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the Gender and Sexuality Commons, and the Other History Commons Recommended Citation Dews, Taylor Marie, "Partisans and Soldiers: Themes of Gender and the Commemoration of Jewish Resistance in the Soviet Union During World War II" (2019). Theses and Dissertations. 2059. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/2059 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PARTISANS AND SOLDIERS: THEMES OF GENDER AND THE COMMEMORATION OF JEWISH RESISTANCE IN THE SOVIET UNION DURING WORLD WAR II by Taylor Dews A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 2019 ABSTRACT PARTISANS AND SOLDIERS: THEMES OF GENDER AND THE COMMEMORATION OF JEWISH RESISTANCE IN THE SOVIET UNION DURING WORLD WAR II by Taylor Dews The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2019 Under the Supervision of Professor Christine Evans Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, thousands of Red Army soldiers, peasants, and Jewish men, women, and children escaped imprisonment and certain death by fleeing into the vast forests of Belorussia. Using oral histories, archival websites, and survivor testimony, this thesis explores the Soviet partisan units and the Jewish partisan units and family camps that were organized in the forests and raises questions including: How do the experiences of Jewish women in the partisans compare with Jewish women who fought in the Red Army? How are the Jewish partisans remembered around the world today? What postwar political objectives helped to shape the contemporary commemoration of Jewish partisans? Although historical narratives may lack absolute certainty in some cases, the testimony of Jewish partisans and soldiers reveals experiences that allow for a more complete understanding of the Second World War in the Soviet Union and expose the ways in which political power can impact social memory. ii © Copyright by Taylor Dews, 2019 All Rights Reserved iii This thesis is dedicated to my grandfather, Richard Lester King June 17, 1943 – January 15, 2017 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………ii Chapter 1: Introduction ……………………………………………………………….…..…1 The Making of a “Partisan Republic” ………………………………………..……..…2 The Historiography of Jewish Resistance in the East ……………………..............5 Contributing to a Larger Discussion……………………………………..................18 The Silencing of a Gendered Resistance…………………………………...………21 Memory Politics and the Commemoration of Jewish Resistance………………...24 Chapter 2: The Holocaust as a Gendered Experience………………………….….. …31 Marginalization, Motivation, and Second Class Citizenship……………………....35 Exploitation, Sexual Violence, and the Dangers of Identity………………….……43 Recognition of Valor in the Postwar and Post-Soviet Eras………………………..54 Applications of Trauma Theory………………………………………………………59 Chapter 3 : The Commemoration of Jewish Resistance …………..………………..…63 Soviet Films as Narrative Propaganda and “Counter-History”……………………68 Jewish Postwar Life and Early Soviet Commemoration of World War II………...74 Commemoration of the War in Post-Soviet Russia……………………………..…80 Commemoration in the “Partisan Republic”………………………………………...87 Western Representations of the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance……………..89 Chapter 4: Conclusion …………………………………………………………………..….98 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………...104 v Chapter 1 Introduction Since the end of the Second World War and the liberation of the death camps, Holocaust survivors have passionately urged for the widespread retraction of the myth of Jewish passivity. The narrative of Jews going to their deaths without opposition has been disapproved by scholars who have more recently joined in the effort to withdrawal these falsehoods by uncovering counter narratives of resistance and defiance. The phrase, “like sheep to the slaughter,” was introduced into the Jewish resistance narrative by 23-year-old Aba Kovner, a Jewish prisoner in the Vilna ghetto, who worked alongside several Jewish youth movement organizations inside the ghetto. Appearing in a 1942 New Year’s Manifesto, the phrase was used as a call to resistance after the Nazi goal of systematic annihilation of all Jews was recognized. Nearly a month after the proclamation was issued, several of the Vilna youth groups established the Vilna Partisan Organization whose chief goal was to make Jewish people aware of their certain fate.1 For the past seventy years, scholars have debated the meaning and the impact that Jewish resistance had on the outcomes of WWII. Scholarship in the 1950s and 1960s produced a twofold historiography. Historians who argued that Jewish resistance made a significant impact during the war did so by focusing their studies on the victims of genocide, while the other group of historians argued that because of the long history 1 Nechama Tec, Resistance: Jews and Christians Who Defied the Nazi Terror, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 6. 1 of Jewish diaspora and discrimination, Jews could not help but to submit to Nazi oppression. Although this last argument may be shocking and seemingly unsympathetic to human suffering, the lack of documentation produced after the war created silences and misinterpretations surrounding the impact of Jewish resistance. When it was discussed, scholars focused on underground resistance movements, like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the uprisings in Auschwitz and Treblinka. In the Soviet Union, early attempts to shed light on Jewish resistance efforts were interrupted and silenced by state censorship and persecution. It is now widely agreed amongst Western historians in the twenty-first century that Jews did indeed resist the Nazis during the Holocaust and did play an integral part in the success of the Soviet Union. Now the dialectic is between those who choose to focus on the perpetrators and their crimes or the victims and their efforts to resist. One method of approach that many historians have since used to argue against this myth of passivity and to show how critical Jewish resistance was to the outcome of the war in the Soviet Union is Jewish involvement in the partisan movement. The Making of a “Partisan Republic” Prior to the 1939, Belorussia, now modern day Belarus, had primarily belonged to the Polish state. When the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed in 1939, Poland was once again divided, and the former Western territories of Belorussia were integrated with the Soviet Union, becoming the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). The German-Soviet non-aggression pact determined that the territories to the east of Minsk 2 would also become part of the BSSR. 2 Many Jewish testimonies support the idea that Jews welcomed the Soviets; some believed it was better to live under Soviet control than under Polish or German occupation. Many held the assumption that Soviet control meant protection.3 Zus Bielski, one of the Bielski brothers responsible for the formation of the Bielski otriad (battalion), described life before the war under the control of the Soviet Union as tolerable; in his opinion Jews were treated fairly and for the most part equally. 4 Jewish survivors who choose to discuss their prewar lives detail growing up without being aware of anti-Semitism and rather relay wonderful memories of their childhoods. 5 However, on June 22, 1941, when the German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union thus beginning the war, these wonderful childhood memories turned immediately into memories of fear, oppression, and loss. By August of that same year, German troops had occupied all of Belorussia and ultimately controlled the lives of several more million Jewish people.6 The chaos and decimation that accompanied Operation Barbarossa in 1941 lead to the collapse of the Red Army, with thousands of soldiers taking refuge in the dense Belorussian woods. Accompanying these soldiers were peasants who lived in the surrounding area and loyal Communist Party members who sought to establish some 2 Anika Walke, Pioneers and Partisans: An Oral History of the Nazi Genocide in Belorussia, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), “Note on Transliteration and Geopolitical terminology” 3 Nechama Tec, Defiance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 17. 4 Zus Bielski, “Zus Bielski Interview - Defiance, the Bielski Otriad, part 2 of 4”. Filmed [1987], Youtube Video, 07:15. Posted [October 5, 2013]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5KrODWTBO8&t=314s 5 Some of these testimonies include those of Raisa Brook (Blavatnik Archive) and Maria Gilmovskaya (Blavatnik Archive). 6 Tim Cole, Holocaust Landscapes ( New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), 45. 3 sort of resistance network. By the end of 1942, partisan warfare became an intricate part of the military success of the Soviet Union. Partisans and Soviet officials recognized that guerilla warfare in this environment would be highly effective due to the topographic layout of the region. Belorussian forests were vastly dense and jungle-like, and the swamps within made the land impenetrable. The impenetrability