Distrust, Animosity, and Solidarity (Jews and Non-Jews during the Holocaust in the USSR)

Interethnic relations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the Holocaust is a topic at the center of intense scholarly and public discussion. In this collection of essays, a broad range of leading researchers examine various aspects of this multifaceted issue from diverse perspectives. The authors’ insightful analyses of the relations among the Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, Poles, and Jews shed light on the prewar views on and stereotypes of the Jews, and on the impact of the German and the Romanian occupation policies during World War II. What emerges is a complex mosaic of the attitudes of the Jews and the non-Jews toward each other. Distrust, Animosity, and Solidarity: Jews and Non-Jews during the Holocaust in the USSR deals with a range of subjects, such as the attitudes of the Ukrainian nationalists; the Ukrainian anti-Communist activists in Kiev; the impact of anti-Jewish propaganda in Transnistria; the relations among Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians in Nazi-occupied Eastern Galicia; Lithuanian perceptions of Jews; the Polish Jewish refugees in Central Asia; the Soviet authorities and the Jewish question; and antisemitism in the press and in the literature of the Soviet intellectuals of the “1960s generation.” It also addresses the central question of how the specific Soviet context influenced these interethnic relations, and discusses how these ethnic groups recalled these relations during the Holocaust through the prism of the postwar conditions.