Memory of the Minsk Ghetto: The Interaction of Genre and Generations after the Holocaust Tierre Sanford Henderson, Nevada Master of Arts, University of Virginia, 2016 Bachelor of Arts, Brigham Young University, 2014 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures University of Virginia May 2020 Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 2 © 2020 Tierre Sanford All rights reserved. Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 3 To those who wrote and write about Minsk and To my parents Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 4 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................... 5 THE HISTORY OF PREWAR JEWISH LIFE IN MINSK ................................................................................................................. 7 THE MINSK GHETTO ..................................................................................................................................................... 11 THE WAVES OF PUBLICATION OF ACCOUNTS ON THE MINSK GHETTO .................................................................................... 14 CHAPTER ONE: THE FIRST GENERATION ........................................................................................................................... 20 CHAPTER TWO: THE SECOND GENERATION ....................................................................................................................... 24 CHAPTER THREE: THE THIRD GENERATION ........................................................................................................................ 27 EXTENDING THE MEMORY OF THE MINSK GHETTO ............................................................................................................. 29 CHAPTER 1: WITNESSING THE MINSK GHETTO: MEMOIRISTS PIECE TOGETHER THE PAST ................................. 31 THE GERMAN OCCUPATION OF MINSK DURING THE SUMMER OF 1941 ................................................................................. 31 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MINSK GHETTO .................................................................................................................... 42 THE FIRST TWO MAJOR POGROMS OF THE MINSK GHETTO ................................................................................................. 54 THE CRUEL WINTER OF 1941-1942: STARVATION, MALINAS, AND ESCAPE ........................................................................... 67 EVERYDAY VIOLENCE, EVEN TOWARD CHILDREN ................................................................................................................ 83 THE BENEFITS AND PERILS OF DOCUMENTATION .............................................................................................................. 102 ESCAPING DEATH ....................................................................................................................................................... 110 THE FOURTH MAJOR POGROM ..................................................................................................................................... 122 PARTISAN LIFE ........................................................................................................................................................... 130 AFTER THE LIQUIDATION OF THE MINSK GHETTO.............................................................................................................. 159 CHAPTER 2: RESTORING MINSK: GEBELEVA'S SACRED QUEST FOR PERSONAL IDENTITY AND SCATTERED COMMUNITY ............................................................................................................................................... 177 THE LONG PATH TO GEBELEV STREET ............................................................................................................................. 177 THE GENRE OF POSTMEMOIR ....................................................................................................................................... 179 REASSEMBLING THE LIFE OF MIKHAIL GEBELEV ................................................................................................................ 183 KUPREEVNA AS THE CATALYST FOR BUILDING A NETWORK OF WITNESSES ............................................................................. 190 EXPANDING HER NETWORK OF REMEMBRANCE ................................................................................................................ 194 SEEKING JUSTICE AND COMMEMORATION ....................................................................................................................... 198 MINSK AS A MEMBER OF GEBELEVA’S COMMUNITY OF WITNESSES ..................................................................................... 202 EXTENDING THE PRACTICE OF WITNESSING INTO LATER GENERATIONS ................................................................................. 204 CHAPTER 3: HEARING THE HOLOCAUST: GROSS-TOLSTIKOV’S FICTIONAL ACCOUNT OF HIS GRANDMOTHER’S CHILDHOOD ................................................................................................................................................. 209 BEFORE THE WAR: AN INTRODUCTION TO MAIA AND MINSK ............................................................................................. 209 LITERARY TECHNIQUES ................................................................................................................................................ 212 THE CHARACTERS OF MINSK ......................................................................................................................................... 219 THEMATIC CONCERNS ................................................................................................................................................. 222 QUESTIONING THE NATURE OF BYSTANDERS ................................................................................................................... 227 MOVING INTO THE GHETTO.......................................................................................................................................... 232 THE FIRST MAJOR POGROM OF THE MINSK GHETTO AND THE CONCEPT OF SOUNDSCAPE ....................................................... 238 AT THE RADIO STATION ............................................................................................................................................... 245 DREAMS AND COMING OF AGE ..................................................................................................................................... 251 A SOUNDSCAPE OF SILENCE .......................................................................................................................................... 253 FIVE YEARS LATER....................................................................................................................................................... 260 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................... 263 WORKS CITED .............................................................................................................................................. 271 Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 5 “In more than 950 cities, towns, and shtetlach of Nazi-dominated Eastern Europe, Jews were confined to ghettos, a form of holding place and twilight zone where they suffered humiliation, persecution, and exploitation prior to their destruction. Yet this central theme in the topography of the Holocaust still remains comparatively under researched and not fully understood.” - Martin Dean Introduction Fifteen years after Martin Dean’s 2005 quote, this hole in public knowledge is only widening. In the American mindset, the term ‘Holocaust’ is rarely associated with the ghettos in which millions were killed. Rather, the Holocaust today means Auschwitz or maybe Dachau. The American perception of the Holocaust tends to concentrate on central European countries such as Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, but rarely considers further east. There are many reasons for this. These countries are more visited by American tourists, their languages more accessible, the sites of the Holocaust are better preserved, and many survivors from these countries have since emigrated to the United States. This is just to name a few. When ghettos are referenced amongst the American public, there is a tendency to speak of Warsaw and Łódź but overlook other ghettos. However, many of these lesser-known ghettos and Holocaust sites are places of untold heroism and resistance. The Minsk ghetto is a prime example of this. The Minsk ghetto was the largest ghetto in the German-occupied Soviet Union—housing approximately 100,000 Jews. Operational from August 1941 until October 1943, it was one of the longest lasting ghettos during the Holocaust. Paradoxically, it was located in the country with the highest Memory of the Minsk Ghetto 6 mortality rate of World War II, yet due in part to a highly effective underground organization, has one of the more significant escape records and survival rates of any ghetto. Unlike most places in the Soviet Union, when the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic was founded on August 1, 1920, it recognized Yiddish as an official state language and granted Jews full civil rights. By the 1930s, Minsk, the capital of Soviet