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The Holocaust in the Soviet Union was the genocide of at least 2 million Soviet Jews by Nazi Germany, Romania, and local collaborators during the German-Soviet War, part of the wider Holocaust and World War II. It may also refer to the Holocaust in the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), recently annexed by the Soviet Union before the start of Operation Barbarossa, as well as other groups murdered in the invasion (such as Roma, Soviet POWs, and others).

The launch of Germany's "war of extermination" against the Soviet Union in June 1941 marked a turning point in the country's anti-Jewish policy from expulsion to mass murder; as a result, it is sometimes seen as marking the beginning of the Holocaust. At the start of the conflict, there were estimated to be approximately five million Jews in the Soviet Union of whom four million lived in the regions occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941 and 1942. The majority of Soviet Jews murdered in the Holocaust were killed in the first nine months of the occupation during the so-called Holocaust by Bullets. Approximately 1.5 million Jews succeeded in fleeing eastwards into Soviet territory; it is thought that 1.152 million Soviet Jews had been murdered by December 1942. In total, at least 2 million Soviet Jews were murdered.

Background

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The Holocaust by Soviet Socialist Republic

• The Holocaust in Byelorussia
• The Holocaust in Estonia
• The Holocaust in Latvia
• The Holocaust in Lithuania
• The Holocaust in Russia
• The Holocaust in Ukraine
• The Holocaust in Romanian-ruled Transnistria

Soviet policy and response

Approximately 300,000 to 500,000 Soviet Jews served in the Red Army during the conflict. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, established in 1941, was active in propagandising for the Soviet war effort but was treated with suspicion. The Soviet press, tightly censored, often deliberately obscured the particular anti-Jewish motivation of the Holocaust.

See also

• Einsatzgruppen
• Joseph Stalin and antisemitism
• Holocaust by Bullets (book)

References

1. "Invasion of the Soviet Union, June 1941". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2024-07-23.
2. "Romania". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2024-07-23.
3. "Collaboration". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2024-07-23.
4. "The Soviet Union and the Eastern Front". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2024-07-23.
5. "Genocide of European Roma (Gypsies), 1939–1945". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2024-07-23.
6. "Invasion of the Soviet Union, June 1941". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
7. "The Invasion of the Soviet Union and the Beginnings of Mass Murder". www.yadvashem.org. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
8. "1941: The Turning Point in the Holocaust". doleinstitute.org. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
9. "Hitler's 'war of annihilation': Operation Barbarossa, 80 years on". France 24. 2021-06-21. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
10. "This week in Jewish history | Nazis launch 'Operation Barbarossa', a turning point in WWII". World Jewish Congress. June 22, 2023. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
11. Overy 1998, p. 142.
12. Benz, Wolfgang (1999). The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide (1st ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 152–153. ISBN 0-231-11215-7.
13. Wolff, Sierra (2021-10-01). "The Holocaust in the Soviet Union". Illinois Holocaust Museum. Retrieved 2024-04-12.
14. Altshuler 2014, p. 16.
15. Berkhoff 2009, p. .

Works cited

• Altshuler, Mordechai (2014). "Jewish Combatants in the Red Army Confront the Holocaust". In Murav, Harriet; Estraikh, Gennady (eds.). Soviet Jews in World War II. Boston: Academic Studies Press. ISBN 9781618119261.
• Berkhoff, Karel C. (2009). ""Total Annihilation of the Jewish Population": The Holocaust in the Soviet Media, 1941–45". Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 10 (1): 61–105. doi:10.1353/kri.0.0080. S2CID 159464815.
• Overy, R. J. (1998). Russia's War. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-713-99223-9.

Further reading

• Berkhoff, Karel C. (2012). Motherland in Danger: Soviet Propaganda during World War II. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 134–66. ISBN 9780674064829.
• Grossmann, Atina; Edele, Mark; Fitzpatrick, Sheila, eds. (2017). Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union. Detroit: Wayne State University. ISBN 9780814342688.
• Feferman, Kiril (2003). "Soviet investigation of Nazi crimes in the USSR: documenting the Holocaust". Journal of Genocide Research. 5 (4): 587–602. doi:10.1080/1462352032000149512.
• Feferman, Ḳiril (2009). Soviet Jewish stepchild: the Holocaust in the Soviet mindset, 1941-1964. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. ISBN 978-3639149807.
• Redlich, Shimon (1995). War, Holocaust, and Stalinism: A Documented Study of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR. Luxembourg: Harwood Academic. ISBN 9783718657391.
• Weiss-Wendt, Anton (2021). Putin's Russia and the Falsification of History: Reasserting Control over the Past. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781350130555., ch. 6.
• Gitelman, Zvi (1990). "History, Memory and Politics: The Holocaust in the Soviet Union". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 5 (1): 23–37. doi:10.1093/hgs/5.1.23.
• Klier, John (2004). "The Holocaust and the Soviet Union". The Historiography of the Holocaust. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 276–295. ISBN 978-0-230-52450-7.
• Arad, Yitshak (2001). "Stalin and the Soviet Leadership: Responses to the Holocaust". In Roth, John K.; Maxwell, Elisabeth (eds.). Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide. Vol. 1. Basingstoke: Palgrave. pp. 355–370. ISBN 9780333804865.

External links

• The Subject of “Jews in Babi Yar” in the Soviet Union in the Years 1941–1945 at Yad Vashem

• Jews and Judaism in the Soviet Union
• The Holocaust by country