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The Holocaust in the Soviet Union

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The Holocaust in the Soviet Union UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM CENTER FOR ADVANCED HOLOCAUST STUDIES The Holocaust in the Soviet Union Symposium Presentations W A S H I N G T O N , D. C. The Holocaust in the Soviet Union Symposium Presentations CENTER FOR ADVANCED HOLOCAUST STUDIES UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM 2005 The assertions, opinions, and conclusions in this occasional paper are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council or of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The articles in this collection are not transcripts of the papers as presented, but rather extended or revised versions that incorporate additional information and citations. All the contributions were copyedited. Although the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum makes every reasonable effort to provide accurate information, the Museum cannot guarantee the reliability, currency, or completeness of the material contained in the individual papers. First printing, September 2005, by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Contents Foreword.............................................................................................................................. i Paul A. Shapiro The Holocaust and Colonialism in Ukraine: A Case Study of the Generalbezirk Zhytomyr, Ukraine, 1941–1944 ...........................................................................................1 Wendy Lower Soviet Jewish War Photojournalists Confront the Holocaust............................................21 David Shneer Ghettos in the Occupied Soviet Union: The Nazi “System”..............................................37 Martin Dean Yizker Bikher as Primary Sources for the Study of Ghettos in the German-Occupied Soviet Union........................................................................................61 Andrew Koss Jewish-Belorussian Solidarity in World War II Minsk......................................................69 Barbara Epstein Internationalism, Patriotism, and Disillusion: Soviet Jewish Veterans Remember World War II and the Holocaust......................................................................95 Zvi Y. Gitelman The Fate of Soviet Soldiers in German Captivity ............................................................127 Reinhard Otto Appendix: Biographies of Contributors...........................................................................139 Foreword The international scholarly symposium The Holocaust in the Soviet Union marked the first concerted effort by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to recognize, encourage and evaluate new avenues of scholarship on this critical topic. While the Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies organized The Holocaust in the Soviet Union as part of its continuing symposium series to draw together Holocaust scholars to share research results and encourage networking, collaborative research, and discussion of research methodologies, the timing of this particular symposium was not by chance. In recent years, the Museum has microfilmed several million pages of archival materials from the countries of the former Soviet Union, materials that only became accessible in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR. During the years immediately preceding the symposium, the Museum had concluded new archival agreements in Russia with the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF) and the Federal Archival Service of the Russian Federation (Rosarkhiv); in Ukraine with the former Communist Party Archives in Kyiv, the Regional Archives of the Rovno Oblast, the Central State Historical Archives in L’viv, the Regional Archives of the Chernivitsi Region, and the Regional Archives of the Crimean Autonomous Republic; in Lithuania with the Central State Archives; in Moldova with the National Archives; and in Belarus with the State Committee on Archives and Record Management. Agreements with the Central State Archives of the republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have followed, allowing the Museum to retrieve unique registration materials pertaining to the large number of Jews who fled east in advance of the Nazi attack. The retrieval of massive documentation—the so-called “trophy documents”—from the formerly secret Osobyi Archives in Moscow, underway when the symposium took place, continues to this day. Other newly available research collections include the records of war crimes trials from the ex-KGB archives of Ukraine, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, and from the Central Archives of the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB); records of the Extraordinary Commission for the History of the Great Patriotic War; and records relating to anti-Nazi partisan units such as the 1st Ukrainian Partisan Division, or “Kovpak division.” Rich collections of Jewish source materials, including Jewish institutional and communal records from Ukraine and the personal archival collections ii • FOREWORD of Soviet Jewish writers who lived and wrote during the Holocaust, round out new collections that offer unprecedented opportunities for research and understanding. The recent availability of previously sealed materials has already produced new insight and generated the nuanced scholarship presented in this symposium. These papers make a promising start in the long process of examining the real impact of the Holocaust on the USSR and on postwar Soviet political, economic, diplomatic, cultural, and intellectual life. The symposium was organized into three sessions. The first, entitled World War II and the Final Solution, began with Timothy Snyder, Assistant Professor of History at Yale University, discussing Volhynian Jews under Polish rule and Soviet and Nazi occupation during the period 1939–1944.1 Wendy Lower, Assistant Professor of History at Towson University, analyzed how mass murder occurred outside the killing centers in Nazi-occupied Poland, emphasizing the roles of German leaders in the “periphery,” and of the non-Jewish indigenous population. David Shneer, Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Associate Professor of History, University of Denver, examined the work of Soviet Jewish photojournalists, who were among the first to visually document Nazi atrocities. The second session explored the theme of Ghettos. Martin Dean, Applied Research Scholar at the Center, shared his research into the structure and function, as well as the regional patterns, of ghettos within the Nazi “system” in the occupied Soviet Union. Andrew Koss, former Research Assistant at the Center and currently a doctoral student at Stanford University, focused on Yiskor (memorial) books and the insights they offer about the fate of individual Jewish communities. Leonid Smilovitsky, of the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center and the Lester and Sally Entin Faculty of the Humanities at Tel Aviv University, explored both the commonalities and the unique features of the ghettos in Gomel Oblast, Belorussia.2 Barbara Epstein, Professor of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz, examined the unusual solidarity between Jews and non-Jews in Minsk, where the Belorussian underground helped large numbers of Jews to flee the ghetto and join the resistance. In the third session, participants discussed The Fate of Jewish and Gentile Soviet Soldiers. Zvi Y. Gitelman, Professor of Political Science and Preston R. Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, examined Soviet Jewish war veterans’ postwar understanding of their wartime motivations, patriotism, and eventual disillusionment with the Soviet system. Reinhard Otto, Director of the FOREWORD • iii Memorial at Former Soviet Prisoner-of-War Camp 326 in Senne, Germany, explored the fate of Soviet POWs by analyzing recently discovered and released wartime records, without which research into their fate had been nearly impossible. Amir Weiner, Associate Professor of History at Stanford University, closed the session by describing the impact of both the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors on the postwar Soviet Union.3 This symposium on The Holocaust in the Soviet Union was made possible through the support of The Helena Rubinstein Foundation. Many members of the Center’s staff deserve thanks for their work on the symposium and proceedings: Robert M. Ehrenreich, Suzanne Brown-Fleming, and Lisa Grandy for developing and organizing the symposium; Geoffrey Megargee and Vadim Altskan for their smooth moderation of panels; and Aleisa Fishman and Paula Dragosh for preparing the papers for publication. Most important, the scholars deserve our thanks for their excellent presentations and their subsequent participation in the editing of those presentations for this publication. Paul A. Shapiro Director Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies United States Holocaust Memorial Museum iv • FOREWORD NOTES 1. See Professor Snyder’s chapter “Volhynian Jews under Polish Rule and Soviet and Nazi Occupation,” in The Shoah and Ukraine, eds. Wendy Lower and Ray Brandon (forthcoming). The subject is also treated in his recent publications: Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); and The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). 2. See Professor Smilovitsky’s article at http://albaruthenia.by.ru/art/eng/holo.htm. 3. See Professor Weiner’s article, “When Memory Counts: War, Genocide, and Postwar Soviet Jewry,” in Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial
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