The Holocaust is the most well-known atrocity committed by the Nazi regime during the Second World War. In perceiving the Holocaust, minds jump to Western Europe: Germany, France, Italy. Often ignored, however, are the eastern territories of the Soviet Union. In the final written words of some of these Soviet Jew victims, readers can find the culture of Russia and the wider Soviet Union embedded into these words. Russian and Soviet culture had a distinct impact on the final moments and letters of Soviet Jews, however, the same culture then seemingly undermined the struggle of Jews throughout the Holocaust.
Two civilian letters from the early days of the Holocaust display widely contrasting perspectives emerging from the beginning. From January 1941, Mariiampil, Poland, present-day Ukraine, comes Yaacov Schwartz, a 24 year-old hopeful for the Polish Army. He was eventually sent to Lvov, Ukraine by a Jewish youth movement, where he disappeared. The nature of his disappearance was unclear, but he was most likely a victim of the Holocaust, as executions of Jews were carried out in Lvov. Therefore, Schwartz, in a letter to his sister, before Lvov, he writes little of war, except for a brief mention in discussing her immigration plans: “I don’t want to even consider the idea that your plans will go awry… even if they do, you should accept the situation gracefully… after all, [this] stormy war raging in the world has overturned many people’s plans” (Schwartz). Neither sibling had yet to experience the horrors of the Holocaust, as Poland wasn’t invaded until September 1941. Still, this displays an early Soviet-Jewish perspective. The war had not yet arrived at their doorstep, however, there were displays of affection: “Be strong always,” “It is a pity I cannot be with you now,” and the finishing, “Sending you a heartfelt kiss” (Schwartz). Culturally, Russians, who have influenced Eastern areas of Ukraine, are very physically affectionate. In this written format, it is clearly shown through these words that, despite Schwartz not knowing that this is his last letter, there is love behind them.
Conversely, Fanya Barbakow, a 19-year-old girl from Druja, Poland, today Belarus, knows she is going to die. Barbakow wrote this letter in June of 1942 from the Druja ghetto, where she and her family were hiding in a bunker under their home during the liquidation of said ghetto. She starts the letter with, “My dear ones!! I am writing this letter before my death, but I don’t know the exact day that I and all my relatives will be killed, just because we are Jews” (Barbakow), which while sounding optimistic in its beginning, turns quickly to her gruesome reality. Only a year and six months after Schwartz’s letter, the reality of Jews in the Soviet Union drastically changed. They know what is to come: ghettos, concentration camps, mass graves and death. However, Barbakow’s affections were present for her siblings, Chaya and Manos: “Dear Chayaleh! Dear Monuska!! It is possible that you will remain alive. Live happily and well. We are all marching proudly towards death, for this is our fate” (Barbakow). Her dark, personal perspective is understandable as the life ahead of her was taken away. However, a common thread of these civilian letters is the hope for the other person, the receiver, and the audience. Barbakow has no choice but to embrace her fate. The same is not true for her siblings, who escaped the life of the ghetto. There is hope for them and that Jewish life carries on as she writes, “I am dying for the sake of my people…Brothers from all countries, avenge us” (Barbakow), moving further than the borders of just her country, but all other countries, to continue to legacy of Judaism.
Then come the “brothers” that Barbakow’s letter speaks of. Soldier perspectives from Jewish members of the Red Army or partisans of Eastern Europe are brief, but there is love, support, affection, and hope present in all aspects of the letters. Yuri Lyrubarski, a Jewish officer of the Red Army, disappeared May 1942 in the Kharkov Region of Ukraine. Addressed to his wife and daughter, it mainly concerns his financial support for the family from the front. Lyrubarski doesn’t extend his love explicitly throughout the letter, but it can be found: “In a few days I will be getting money, and I’ll send you some. Then you’ll be able to buy yourself and Larichka everything you want” and “Write as much as you can, and in as much detail as you can. I will read the good news with great pleasure” (Lyrubarski). These sentiments also echo within the other two letters from service members Tuvia Grin and Boris Binyamin Tabakmacher. The love may not consistently be directed towards the receiver, but within their words, you can find the physical connections they are trying to make with the reader. Another affection to be observed from Tabakmacher and Lyrubarski is the sending of certificates and permits, most likely for retrieving money directly from the Soviet government. This communal Russian idea, in a sense, lends itself to this practice and other actions mentioned, such as sending regards to all near and distant relatives, or Grin’s expressed feelings about leaving his family alone in the ghetto to his sister in Eretz Israel: “I left everyone at home…in the ghetto…I feel terrible for leaving them in the thieving hands of Hitler’s robbers, and who knows what is happening to them” (Grin). Though everyone throughout the war worried about family, this is prominent throughout Eastern Europe as communal culture, especially as exacerbated by the USSR, has been a key historical characteristic of Russia and its surrounding countries as it has spread its influence for centuries. Despite the distance, there is still care and worry for those at home, who may just as well be fighting a battle not too far from what the soldiers themselves experience.
However, in the post-war era, there was a sense of betrayal from the “motherland”. Soviet Jew struggles were not completely wiped from history, but were lumped together in post-war writings with other Soviet struggles during the Great Patriotic War. While Soviet Jews only accounted for 10% of casualties within the USSR, their group recognition horrifically undermines the target Nazis had placed upon them. This lack of individual recognition didn’t have regulation in its presentation, leading to widely varying portrayals, many likely censored. The Soviet research on the Holocaust, the Black Book of Soviet Jewry, a state creation, became so censored and generalized, that it didn’t go to print in the USSR. It is widely speculated as to why the Jewish struggle was grouped, censored, and unrepresented, but it most likely stems from Soviet political and social ideology, which lasted until the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s. A key idea that comes forward is the post-war ‘Soviet identity’. There was already anti-semitic stigma linking Jews and communism, which authorities were fully aware of, but also the idea of Jewish individuality separating them from the Soviet group. Theoretically, speaking of individual Jewish struggle could alienate them from the “unifying Soviet experience” of the war, reinforce Jewish national identity, slow assimilation, and diminish Soviet struggle. Not only that, but there were non-Jewish indigenous groups who participated in the massacre and submitted to Nazi rule, which authorities worried that learning of the cooperation would have citizens believe that it “suggested that some national and social groups felt that their interests were not represented or were even denied by the prevailing system of [Soviet] government” (Baranova 6) and “undermined the notion of solidarity, friendship and the common interests of all peoples in the Soviet Union” (Baranova 7). Complete silence was impossible, but from these reasons emerged the general pattern of not separately discussing Judaism in association with the Holocaust, including using generalized language and the direct targeting by Nazis. Slowly but surely since its collapse, previous members of the USSR have more widely recognized the loss of Soviet Jews, but there is no denying the politics emerging from the conversation.
It is high time that the Soviet Jews receive recognition for the brutality and struggle they experienced in the country’s Great Patriotic War. When learning the history of what these people went through, and how the Soviet Union grouped their singled-out violent treatment with the other casualties of the war, to see it as part of the unified struggle of comrades, it is quite upsetting and disturbing. Many countries since its collapse have begun to recognize the individual struggle of Jewish people during the war, but it is important to ensure that they will not once again be lumped in, as part of the same struggle as everyone else. This event has been long unexplored and not taught in previous countries of the USSR, and it is one of the most significant events in recent history that should be discussed. Through these letters, one can find cultural humanity and care, which if not treated with humility and respect, are bound to repeat elsewhere.
Works Cited
Baranova, Olga. 2015. Politics of Memory of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. In: Dimensions of Modernity. The Enlightenment and its Contested Legacies, ed. P. Marczewski, S. Eich, Vienna: IWM Junior Visiting Fellows’ Conferences, Vol. 34.
Barbakow, Fanya. “16 June 1942 : Druja, Poland | “on the Edge of a Volcano” – Last Letters from the Holocaust: 1942 | Yad Vashem.” www.yadvashem.org, www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/last-letters/1942/barbakow.asp.
Binyamin Tabakmacher, Boris. “1 November 1944: Military Post 73571-d | Last Letters from the Holocaust.” www.yadvashem.org, www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/last-letters/1944/tabakmakher.asp.
Grin, Tuvia. “27 August 1943: Balakhna, Russia | Last Letters from the Holocaust.” Yadvashem.org, www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/last-letters/1943/grin.asp.
Lyrubarski, Yuri. “16 May 1942 – Last Letters from the Holocaust.” www.yadvashem.org, www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/last-letters/1942/lyubarski.asp.
Schwartz, Yaacov. “January 1941 : Mariiampil | “We Shall Meet Again” – Last Letters from the Holocaust: 1941 | Yad Vashem.” www.yadvashem.org, www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/last-letters/1941/schwartz.asp.
Weinberg, Robert. (2006). “The Politics of Remembering: The Treatment of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union”. The Holocaust in International Perspective. Volume 7, 314-329.
