Language:
English
Year of publication:
2011
Titel der Quelle:
Nationalities Papers
Angaben zur Quelle:
39,2 (2011) 277-294
Keywords:
Karaites History
;
Karaites
;
Jews
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
The Nazi attitude regarding the question of whether the Karaites were of "Jewish racial origin" or not was inconsistent, as were their policies toward the Karaites. Before the war began, German scholarship and the SS regarded them as "racial Jews"; the attitude of the Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung, subordinated to the party and the state, was ambivalent. In 1939 the Reichsstelle issued a ruling that the German anti-Jewish laws did not affect the Karaites; however, in the occupied Soviet territories this decree was not always respected. Karaites of German-occupied Lithuania and Crimea, as well as of France, were spared from destruction, while Karaites of Kiev and Krasnodar were killed together with Jews. From 1943 on, there was a clear tendency in Nazi scholarship and policy to dissociate Karaites from Jews in both racial and religious terms, and to unite them with Tatars and Muslims. The motives for this tendency were complicated. Nazi scholars who ruled that Karaites were of Turkic origin were most probably eager to evade accusations of involvement with Nazi racial policies after the impending German defeat. For the German state and the SS, practical considerations, e.g. Germany's relations with the Muslim East, took precedence over the racial policies - the Karaite issue was an important factor in Nazi relations with the Crimean Tatars and Muslims elsewhere.
DOI:
10.1080/00905992.2010.549468
URL:
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