In November 2016, the Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union at Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research held a research workshop, entitled “Jews and Non-Jews During the Holocaust in the USSR: The Perspective of Inter-Ethnic Relations.” The workshop, which was attended by researchers from the US, Moldova, Canada, the Netherlands, Russia and Israel, was part of a multiannual study seeking to research various aspects of this key topic. Prof. JohnPaul Himka, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Alberta, Canada, gave a lecture that elicited great interest. Prof. Himka emphasized the Nazi-style racist aspect of the hatred that members of the Ukrainian nationalist organization OUN felt for the Jews along with classic antisemitic stereotypes, such as blaming them for exploiting others, promulgating ”Judeo-Bolshevist” ideology and acting as “agents of Moscow.” Prof. Himka argued that the young Ukrainian nationalists adopted the Nazi line, which caused a dramatic change vis-à-vis the Jews: In contrast with the other peoples, it was no longer possible to incorporate them into Ukrainian society. That notwithstanding, Prof. Himka recalled that for the Ukrainian nationalists, the Jews constituted a secondary enemy, and that the Ukrainian nationalist movement’s sworn enemies were the Poles and the Soviet regime. Prof. Nikita Lomagin, Vice-Rector at the European University, St. Petersburg, gave an overview of antisemitism in Leningrad during the German siege. He claimed that there was a rapid increase in antisemitism between JulyNovember 1941, which even caused Andrei Zhdanov, secretary of the Communist Party in Leningrad and the political official responsible for the Leningrad front during WWII, to give two public addresses in August 1941 against the antisemitism spreading across the city. The lecture of Dr. Leonid Rein of Yad Vashem’s Research Institute addressed the image of Jews as reflected in Belaruskaya Hazeta, the leading Belarussian-language newspaper, which was published under German occupation. Dr. Rein illustrated how the image of Jews as depicted in the pages of the newspaper constituted a mixture of racist-ideological images and classic antisemitic stereotypes. The paper actively promoted the idea that Jews were a misfortune that had befallen Belarus, and voiced support for their physical annihilation, even if it did not explicitly mention the mass murder of the Jews. Dr. Rein also noted that the further the mass murder of the Jews of Belarus expanded, the greater the number of antisemitic articles in the paper. Other participants presented additional aspects in this field of research. The workshop afforded the participants the opportunity to share their projects’ intermediate findings with their colleagues and obtain important feedback for their continued research.
Program of an International Workshop on an Ongoing Research Project, November 28 – 29, 2016
