Jewish Soviet Responses to Experiences of Violence in the 1940s

The Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Holocaust, the Great Patriotic War, and the onset of the Cold War – all the great international ruptures affecting the Soviet Union during this era also had a direct impact on the fate and scope of action available to the Jewish minority living in the country. The seminar will address this violent decade from the Jewish Soviet perspective. On the basis of testimonies, we will examine the tragic contemporary events occurring at home and abroad and concurrently analyze the repeatedly changing relationship between the Jewish population and the Soviet state.

Literature: Estraikh, Gennady, The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, in: East European Jewish Affairs 48 (2018), nr. 2, 139-148.; Giloba, Yehoshua, The Black Years of Soviet Jewry, Boston/Toronto 1971.; Grüner, Frank, Patrioten und Kosmopoliten. Juden im Sowjetstaat 1941-1953, Köln u.a. 2008.; Lustiger, Arno: Rotbuch. Stalin und die Juden. Die tragische Geschichte des Jüdischen Antifaschistischen Komitees und der sowjetischen Juden, Berlin 2000.; Redlich, Shimon: War, Holocaust and Stalinism. A Documented Study of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR, Luxembourg u.a. 1995.