Language:
English
Year of publication:
1995
Titel der Quelle:
Вестник Еврейского университета
Angaben zur Quelle:
9 (1995) 56-92
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
Based on interviews, mainly with non-Jewish eyewitnesses of the Holocaust, examines the perception and postwar representation of the Holocaust by non-Jews (Belorussians, Russians) who lived in the areas which had belonged to the USSR before 1939 (not those annexed in 1939-40). Analysis of the accounts shows that despite the massive 20-year-long prewar Soviet internationalist indoctrination, witnesses harbored many anti-Jewish stereotypes, some traditional, but others produced by Soviet conditions. The witnesses' narratives tend to whitewash the behavior of non-Jews during the Nazi occupation, and, at the same time to blame the victims themselves for their sufferings (e.g. the Jews were stupid, passive, faint-hearted, avaricious, had a strange moral code, etc., and because of this they perished). Jewish belongings left behind have a special place in the narratives - many of the non-Jews took such goods, but are now reluctant to speak about it. A great deal of indifference to the suffering and death of Jews may be detected in some accounts.
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