USSR
The Holocaust
in the occupied Soviet Union is one of largest subjects
in the Shoah Foundation Institute's Visual History Archive, discussed in
12,521
interviews that include 7,084 in Russian and 304 in Ukrainian. A major effort was undertaken to record testimonies in the former Soviet Union—3,403 interviews in Ukraine, 690 in Russia, and 247 in Belarus—with interviewees who were often still living in the same location as they had before and during the war. Other survivors from this part of the world were interviewed in Israel, the United States, Germany, and elsewhere.
A number of themes are common to interviews describing the Soviet experience:
• General aspects of Soviet life: membership of the Communist Party, participation in the Komsomol and Pioneers; attitudes toward Stalin; life on the collective farms; Stalinist political repressions; Soviet concentration camps; the Soviet political police, including several interviews with people who served in the NKVD.
• Soviet Jewish life: the closure of Jewish schools and synagogues; Jewish religious observance in the USSR; Jews serving in the Soviet army; issues of Jewish and Soviet identity and anti-Semitism in the USSR (the “5th line of the Soviet passport”); the “Anti-cosmopolitan” campaign and the “Doctor’s Plot”; Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Additionally, the Visual History Archive includes a rare collection of interviews
with Karaites, Krimchaks, Mountain Jews, and Bukharan Jews.
• The evacuation and flight of civilians in the wake of the Axis invasion
of June 22, 1941.
• Mass shootings
both large (such as at Babi Yar in Kyiv) and small (numerous massacres conducted in rural locations); executions using gas vans; subsequent
Nazi efforts to cover up traces of mass killings, e.g. as conducted by Sonderkommando
1005 units.
• The establishment of ghettos and camps in the occupied Soviet Union: in some cases, these ghettos and camps are very obscure and Visual History Archive testimonies may be some of the only sources that confirm their existence.
• The partisan movement: the archive has a large body of information
on a great number of resistance groups (including Jewish partisans
units), the individuals
connected to them, their operations, structure, organization, rules,
and so on.
• Soviet POWs: the archive contains a number of interviews
of Soviet-Jewish prisoners of war who hid their Jewish identity to survive.
• Ostarbeiter: the archive contains a number of interviews of Soviet-Jewish civilians
who concealed their Jewish identity and were deported to Germany with
other Ukrainians, Poles, Belorussians, and Russians.
•
Transnistria: the archive has around 3,500 testimonies that relate
to Transnistria—the area of southwestern Ukraine between the
rivers Dniester and Bug that was under Romanian control between 1941
and 1944. Subjects discussed include the deportation of Jews from Bessarabia
and Bukovina to Transnistria; the establishment of ghettos, camps and
colonies; conditions under the Romanians; relations between the local
Jews and the deportees; and the operation to rescue Jewish orphans
from Transnistria organized by the Jewish communities in Bucharest
and Palestine.
• Post-liberation and return home: filtration camps; the treatment of
Soviet citizens who had been under German occupation during the war;
and the non-recognition by Soviet authorities of Jewish suffering in
the Holocaust.
UKRAINE
While the bulk of modern-day Ukrainian territory—the centre,
east and some of the south—fell into the USSR before 1939, sections
of western and southern Ukraine were part of Poland (Galicia, Volhynia),
Czechoslovakia (Transcarpathian Ruthenia), and Romania (Bessarabia,
Bukovina) before the outbreak of World War II. As a result, the testimonies in which interviewees talk about Ukraine are in various languages
and the experiences they describe differ considerably by geographic region.
For instance, testimonies from witnesses growing up in Soviet Ukraine contain accounts of the Great Famine of 1932-33 (discussed in over 700 interviews), today often referred to as genocide, as well as the famine of 1946-47 (360 interviews).
The interviews relating to western and southern Ukraine (Galicia and
Volhynia) include discussions of pogroms; the ghettos and camps of
the region (especially Lviv); mass executions; escapes; hiding; help
given by the local population; the role of the Greek Catholic Church;
the Ukrainian nationalist movement and its military wing (OUN and UPA);
and partisan activity.
Testimonies pertaining to central areas of Ukraine include witnesses
to the Babi Yar massacre in Kyiv. Many survivors of such actions went
into hiding or assumed false identities. The largest ghetto of eastern
Ukraine, in Khar'kov, is discussed in a number of interviews. Those
who escaped the mass killings there generally fled to Soviet-controlled
territory further east.
In terms of southern Ukraine, as mentioned above, there are over 3,500 interviews with survivors of Transnistria, which was under
Romanian administration. It was to this area that the Jews of Bessarabia
and Bukovina were deported. Other parts of southern Ukraine that fell
outside Transnistria, such as the Kherson area, are also represented
in the archive. In these areas, there were many Jewish kolkhoz settlements
established before the war. The Nazis operated numerous work camps
during the occupation and the Organisation Todt, the German military
labor contractor, was also active in the region. Many survivors hid
or assumed false identities.
Over 2,000 of the archive's interviewees were born in Transcarpathian Ruthenia, modern-day
Zakarpattia, which was annexed by Hungary during the war and which the Germans subjected to the full force of the Final Solution in 1944. Around 100 of these interviews are
in Russian and Ukrainian (Rusyn). These describe service in the Hungarian
military labor companies; the concentration of the local Jews into
ghettos, their subsequent deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau and extermination
there; the transfer of those deemed suitable to other labor camps;
and other subjects.
A total of 3,403 interviews were conducted in Ukraine by the Shoah
Foundation; 304 interviews were conducted in the Ukrainian language.
BELARUS
Before 1939, the area that constitutes modern-day Belarus was divided between Poland and the Soviet Union. The Visual History Archive has a great many interviews with people hailing from what was once eastern Poland, e.g. cities such as Baranavichy, Hrodna, Navahrudak, Lida,
Slonim, Pinsk. Equally, the archive has interviews with witnesses from Soviet Belorussia—from Minsk, Mahiliou, Babruisk, Homel',
Vitsebsk and other locations.
The interviews give information on 89 ghettos and 27 camps in "Polish" Belarus and 68 ghettos and 22 camps in "Soviet" Belarus. There is a particularly strong collection of interviews with
survivors from the Minsk Ghetto, who managed to escape from the ghetto
and join the partisans; these include interviewees with the leaders
of the Minsk ghetto resistance or their family members. The archive also provide historical insight into
less well known places, such as the relatively obscure ghetto in Kolyshki from which survivors were able to escape to safety in March 1942, having learned that the Soviet frontline was momentarily nearby.
On account of its forests and swamps,
Belarus was the center of Soviet partisan
activity, and the testimonies reflect this prominently. Many interviewees fought in Jewish partisan units such as the Bielski partisans or the Zorin detachment or with the numerous Soviet units operational there.
A noteworthy group of testimonies are those given by people who assisted
Jews in escaping and hiding, often for extended periods. Most aid recipients
kept close relations with their rescuers after the war. Twelve rescuers were interviewed in Belarus.
A total of 247 interviews were conducted in Belarus, all in Russian.
RUSSIA
In Russia, the Holocaust reached its easternmost point and extended across a vast expanse of land. From historic Pushkin on the outskirts of Leningrad in the north to Nal′chik and Mozdok in the Caucasus Mountains in the south, the total area of Russia that the Germans came to control was as big as both Ukraine and Belorussia put together.
Unlike lands further west, the Russian territories were always close to the front lines and, as a result, were exclusively under German military, rather than civilian, administration for the entirety of the occupation. Here, Jews were not deported but were killed on the spot—in mass shootings or occasionally in hermetically sealed “gas vans”. Ghettos and a few camps were established. Remarkably, some areas that were occupied for only a very short period of time—occasionally as little as two months—were left Judenrein by the time the Red Army had retaken control.
Conversely, various factors meant that the Jewish population of Russia was decimated somewhat less than elsewhere. Because they resided in the easternmost region the Germans were to reach, Russian Jews had perhaps the greatest opportunity to learn of Nazi atrocities as well as the shortest distances to flee to safety; furthermore, Moscow and Leningrad, the cities with the largest Jewish populations in the USSR, were never captured.
Those who survived the German occupation in Russia were usually those who could pass as non-Jews. As such they endured the “normal” treatment meted out by the Germans to the local population: starvation, forced labor, and deportation—whether as prisoners-of-war or as Ostarbeiters.
Despite the size of the region affected and the numbers of people killed (between 119,000 and 140,000),
the Holocaust in Russia has received relatively little scholarly attention
and is not well known by the public.
The testimonies of the Visual History Archive contain references to 28 ghettos in occupied Russia—both the better known examples in northern and central regions (e.g. Kaluga, Il'ino, Smolensk, and Usviaty) as well as virtually unknown ghetto-like facilities in rural areas of southern Russia and the Caucasus region. In addition, interviewees discuss at least 20 concentration camps and 32 prisoner of war camps in Russia.
The experiences of Jewish ethnicities are
also represented: the Mountain Jews in and around the city of Nal’chik
and the Krymchaks and Karaites in the Crimea.
A large number of these relate to the experiences of Polish Jews deported to Siberia after the Soviets annexed Eastern Poland in 1939; they describe exile in remote areas of Russia (Komi ASSR, Arkhangel’sk Oblast, Siberia).
A total of 690 interviews were conducted in the Russian Federation
by the Shoah Foundation.
GEORGIA
Six interviews were conducted in Georgia, all in Russian. They relate the wartime experiences
of people who moved to Georgia after World War II.
KAZAKHSTAN
Six interviews were conducted in Kazakhstan, all were in Russian. They relate the wartime experiences of people who moved to Kazakhstan after World War II.
UZBEKISTAN
Twenty five interviews were conducted in Uzbekistan, all in Russian. They relate the wartime experiences of people who moved to Uzbekistan after World War II.
