Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering

by Harriet Murav, Gennady Estraikh

Overview

This volume discusses the participation of Jews as soldiers, journalists, and propagandists in combating the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War, as the period between June 22, 1941, and May 9, 1945 was known in the Soviet Union. The essays included here examine both newly-discovered and previously-neglected oral testimony, poetry, cinema, diaries, memoirs, newspapers, and archives. This is one of the first books to combine the study of Russian and Yiddish materials, reflecting the nature of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which, for the first time during the Soviet period, included both Yiddish-language and Russian-language writers. This volume will be of use to scholars, teachers, students, and researchers working in Russian and Jewish history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781618119261
Publisher:	Academic Studies Press
Publication date:	08/28/2019
Series:	Borderlines: Russian and East European-Jewish Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	270
Sales rank:	153,389
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Gennady Estraikh is associate professor of Yiddish studies, Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. He is the author of Yiddish in the Cold War (2008), In Harness: Yiddish Writer's Romance with Communism (2004), Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development (1999) and the co-editor of Translating Sholem Aleichem: History, Politics, and Art (2012) and 1929: Mapping the Jewish World (2013).
Harriet Murav is professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Hey studies of Dostoyevsky, Russian law and literature, and twentieth century Russian and Yiddish literature are complemented by her most recent monograph, Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia (2011). She is the co-editor of Jews in the East European Borderlands: Essays in Honor of John Klier (2012).
Gennady Estraikh is a Clinical Professor at New York University. He received a doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1996, and has worked at the Oxford Institute of Yiddish Studies and London University. He is Director of the Shvidler Project for the History of the Jews of the Soviet Union at NYU, and Senior Scholar at the Moscow Higher School of Economics.

What People are Saying About This

Mikhail Krutikov

"This collection tells stories of Jews in World War II which are practically unknown in the West. These stories are not about the Warsaw Ghetto or Auschwitz, but about Soviet Jewish soldiers, partisans, intellectuals and artists, men and women who fought in the bloodiest battles that the world has known. Drawing on a wide variety of little-known sources, such as private letters, archival documents, memoirs, newspaper reports, novels, poems, photographs and film, this book paints a vivid and dramatic picture of human suffering and heroism."

From the Publisher

"This collection tells stories of Jews in World War II which are practically unknown in the West. These stories are not about the Warsaw Ghetto or Auschwitz, but about Soviet Jewish soldiers, partisans, intellectuals and artists, men and women who fought in the bloodiest battles that the world has known. Drawing on a wide variety of little-known sources, such as private letters, archival documents, memoirs, newspaper reports, novels, poems, photographs and film, this book paints a vivid and dramatic picture of human suffering and heroism."

“An impressive introduction to new sources and groundbreaking methods in the study of Soviet-Jewish experience during the Second World War. The studies combine an impressive range of critical and historical approaches with solid learning.”

Olga Litvak

“An impressive introduction to new sources and groundbreaking methods in the study of Soviet-Jewish experience during the Second World War. The studies combine an impressive range of critical and historical approaches with solid learning.”

Editorial Reviews

The perpetrator-bystander-victim model that has by and large dominated Holocaust scholarship is challenged by the appearance of Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering, a collection of essays that examines the role of Soviet Jews as heroes during what the Soviets called the Great Patriotic War. Although the essays in the book cover different types of texts, they are united by a similar set of concerns ... demonstrating that in addition to the breadth of essays present here on the subject of the Holocaust in the Soviet context, the entire Soviet epoch ... is a treasure-trove

Naya Lekht

One of this volume’s most significant achievements is that it contains material that will help educators teach about the Soviet Jewish experience as part of undergraduate courses on the Holocaust. Beautiful translations of Erenburg letters, Selvinskii’s and Slutskii’s poems, and Mikhail Romm’s accounts . . . are among the most valuable key texts, which will change the way the Holocaust is taught in North America. The combination of thorough analysis of new sources with the publication of primary materials make this volume a must-have for anyone interested in Soviet Jewish history and the Holocaust.

Slavic Review, vol. 74, no. 3 (Fall 2015) - Anna Shternshis (University of Toronto)

This excellent volume explores the important role that Soviet Jews played as combatants, journalists, writers, poets, film-makers and photo-correspondents waging war against the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. Rather than focusing on the Holocaust’s victims, these essays tell the stories of soldiers who fought on and survived the frontlines, and cultural figures who helped frame the Soviet narrative of the war. By highlighting Soviet Jewish martial achievement, this book raises awareness of the Jewish contribution to Soviet victory and counters the wartime and postwar slanders that Jews sat out the war safe behind the lines. It also draws attention to a wealth of previously unknown or neglected sources, including diaries, memoirs, newspapers, poetry, prose and archival documents.”

—Robert Dale, Newcastle University, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies

From the Publisher

"The essays range far and wide."

sheldonkirshner.com and The Times of Israel - Sheldon Kirshner

One of this volume’s most significant achievements is that it contains material that will help educators teach about the Soviet Jewish experience as part of undergraduate courses on the Holocaust. Beautiful translations of Erenburg letters, Selvinskii’s and Slutskii’s poems, and Mikhail Romm’s accounts . . . are among the most valuable key texts, which will change the way the Holocaust is taught in North America. The combination of thorough analysis of new sources with the publication of primary materials make this volume a must-have for anyone interested in Soviet Jewish history and the Holocaust.

Slavic Review, vol. 74, no. 3 (Fall 2015) - Anna Shternshis (Universityof Toronto)