The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization

On the eve of the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941, Ukraine was home to the largest Jewish community in Europe. Between 1941 and 1944, some 1.4 million Jews were killed there, and one of the most important centers of Jewish life was destroyed. Yet, little is known about this chapter of Holocaust history. Drawing on archival sources from the former Soviet Union and bringing together researchers from Ukraine, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States, The Shoah in Ukraine sheds light on the critical themes of perpetration, collaboration, Jewish-Ukrainian relations, testimony, rescue, and Holocaust remembrance in Ukraine.

Contributors are Andrej Angrick, Omer Bartov, Karel C. Berkhoff, Ray Brandon, Martin Dean, Dennis Deletant, Frank Golczewski, Alexander Kruglov, Wendy Lower, Dieter Pohl, and Timothy Snyder.

"A useful introduction to a very complex topic, but it also highlights the work remaining for scholars in Ukraine and elsewhere and the continuing need for further international scholarly collaboration." --Sean Martin, The Russian Review

"The introduction to the volume asks several open questions and makes clear that the intention of the book is to lay the ground for further research on the Shoah in Ukraine within the framework of Holocaust studies... This reflects both the circumstance that research on the Shoah in Ukraine as a whole is still only beginning, and the marginalized status of Holocaust remembrance in Ukraine, too. To give the memory of the victims and the acknowledgement of collaboration on Ukrainian soil a future frame, a Ukrainization of the discourse, the aim of the volume being discussed here, is definitely appropriate." --H-Judaic Indiana University Press

"[This] collection contains an interesting mix of general overviews and more specific case studies written by the experts in their field.... [I]t is very helpful to have these different approaches in one volume, which represents an excellent introduction to the questions surrounding the Holocaust in Ukraine." --Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 89, No. 2, April 2011

"This is a really important Holocaust anthology, and essential reading for all scholars and students in serach of the most up-to-date research and interpretation of the Nazi--and indeed subaltern--killing fields in the Ukraine." --Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 13:3

"Bitter memories and the specter of the Holocaust continue to haunt Jewish-Ukrainian relations.... Only a full admission of the disturbing facts of the past and a full respect for the perpetuation of the memory of the former Jewish communities may at least partly exorcise the guilt and open a new page [in their] mutual relations. Perhaps this book may serve as one of the guiding lights in this direction." --Jerusalem Post

"The Shoah in Ukraine sheds light on the critical themes of perpetration, collaboration, Jewish-Ukrainian relations, testimony, rescue, and Holocaust remembrance in Ukraine." --Shofar

"[This book]... represents a major contribution to Holocaust historiography." --Dan Stone, Jewish History Indiana University Press

"An excellent volume that approaches the Holocaust in Ukraine from a variety of angles.... Highlights the complexity of the 'Final Solution' in Ukraine." --Jeff Rutherford, H-German

"Rarely have I read an anthology that is of such consistently high quality.... The writing is almost uniformly excellent and the production by Indiana University Press is of the highest quality.... The editors have produced a riveting volume that should attract wide scholarly and general audiences." --Slavic Review

"This collection is a worthy enterprise that offers new insights into the Holocaust on the territory of contemporary Ukraine.... The investigation of the Holocaust in Ukraine, as well as in Belarus to the north where some 900,000 Jews died, is finally under way." --American Historical Review

"It represents easily the most detailed and sophisticated survey of the Holocaust in Ukraine that we possess... [A] major contribution to Holocaust historiography." --Jewish History, 2010, Volume 24

"[This] volume is a significant contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust as it took place in Ukraine." --Harvard Ukrainian Studies

"Deserving special note are Timothy Snyder's chapter on Volhynian Jewry for its elegant and diligent use of both general and Jewish sources; and Karel C. Berkhoff 's sensitive analysis of the various testimonies of Dina Pronicheva, who survived the nightmarish Babi Yar massacre. Omer Bar-Tov concludes the book with an overview of how the Jewish facets of Eastern Galicia's history are systematically ignored and erased by Ukrainians in whose historical consciousness there is no room for how Jews lived and were murdered in a region that was a center of Jewish culture and religion." --Jewish Book World

"Written by experts in their fields and accompanied by excellent maps and illustrations, all chapters and the editors' introduction are of very high quality.... this volume lays the groundwork for all further study of the Holocaust in Ukraine." --Helmut Langerbein, University of Texas at Brownsville, Holocaust and Genocide Studies Indiana University Press

"This book is groundbreaking, but as the co-editors admit in their Introduction, 'a comprehensive history of the Holocaust in the Ukraine as a whole still has not been written'.... Thanks to its rich documentation and clearly written, nuanced contributions, The Shoah in Ukraine is an innovative and interdisciplinary contribution that serves as an essential step in that direction by drawing on history, memory studies, and political science." --German Studies Review

Ray Brandon is a freelance editor, translator, and researcher based in Berlin. A former editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, English Edition, he has also lived and worked in Ukraine and Poland.

Wendy Lower is a research fellow and lecturer at Ludwig Maximilians Universität in Munich. Author of Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine, she is a past research fellow and Director of Visiting Scholar Programs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.

List of Maps

Acknowledgments

Introduction / Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower

1. The Murder of Ukraine's Jews under German Military Administration and in the Reich Commissariat Ukraine / Dieter Pohl

2. The Life and Death of Western Volhynian Jewry, 1921-1945 / Timothy Snyder

3. Shades of Grey: Reflections on Jewish-Ukrainian and German-Ukrainian Relations in Galicia / Frank Golczewski

4. Transnistria and the Romanian Solution to the "Jewish Problem" / Dennis Deletant

5. Annihilation and Labor: Jews and Thoroughfare IV in Central Ukraine / Andrej Angrick

6. "In him lies the weight of the entire administration": Nazi Civilian Rulers and the Holocaust in Zhytomyr / Wendy Lower

7. Soviet Ethnic Germans and the Holocaust in the Reich Commissariat Ukraine, 1941-1944 / Martin Dean

8. Jewish Losses in Ukraine, 1941-1944 / Alexander Kruglov

9. Dina Pronicheva's Story of Surviving the Babi Yar Massacre: German, Jewish, Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian Records / Karel C. Berkhoff

10. White Spaces and Black Holes: Eastern Galicia's Past and Present / Omer Bartov

Map Sources

Selected Supplemental Bibliography

Contributors

Index