Ukraine without Jews - by Vasil Grossman
ritten soon after the oiet rmy liberated eastern kraine from €erman ou‚ation in midƒ1„…† the original manusri‚t of ‡asily €rossman’s essay ‘kraine ithout Jews’ was thought to hae been lost after the eond orld ar Št irst a‚‚eared in 1„„‹ in the shortƒlied Œournal Vek and is translated here into English for the irst time ‘kraine ithout Jews’ is a ‚owerful and historially signiiant essayŽ one of the earliest ‚ubli statements about the mass murder of Jews in 1„…1 and 1„…2 during the ‘a’i ou‚ation of oiet kraine it is also one of the irst attem‚ts in any language to systematially e“‚lain the ideologial and material moties behind the genoide that €rossman alls the ‘greatest rime eer ommitted in history’ ‘kraine ithout Jews’ was initially reŒeted for ‚ubliation in 1„…† by the military news‚a‚er Red Star ”Krasnaia zvezda• where €rossman had earned a huge following from his re‚orts of the oiet rmy’s harrowing defense and stunning itory at talingrad The essay was then translated into –iddish and ‚ublished in the weekly ‚a‚er of the Jewish ntiƒ—asist Committee Unity ”Einikayt• Št was ‚ublished in two abridged setions and then disontinued The –iddish translation remained the only e“tant ersion of the essay after 1„…† and was bakƒtranslated into Russian in 1„˜™ Šn 1„„‹ the original Russian manusri‚t ”nearly three times the length of the bakƒtranslation• surfaed from €rossman’s estate and was ‚ublished in Vek The reoery of ‘kraine ithout Jews’ in its original form allows us to trae the origins and deelo‚ment of €rossman’s historial ommemoratie and literary writing about the ‘atastro‚he’ ”as the hoah was known in Russian• €rossman e“‚anded u‚on and modiied many of the ideas in this essay in later writings inluding ‘The šell of Treblinka’ ”used as doumentary eidene of ‘a’i war rimes at the ‘uremburg Trials in 1„…™• as well as his editorial work on the monumental anthology The Black Book and his two greatest noels For a Just Cause and Life and Fate ‘kraine ithout Jews’ also ‚roides uni›ue insight into €rossman’s initial reation to the genoide as a oiet Jewœ in it he e“‚resses both his ‚ride in soialist ‚rini‚les and oiet military ‚ower and his desire to ‚ubliise and e“‚lain the e“e‚tional nature of Jewish itimisation at the hands of the ‘a’is €rossman’s own mother had been among the itims murdered in 1„…1 in the western krainian ity of his birth Berdihe Ukraine Witho By Vasily Grossman Translated into English for the irst time by Polly Zavadivker The translator would like to thank Robert Chandler for sharing the original ersion of this essay and for his beneiial omments on an early draft of the translation When our forces enter the villages of Left-bank Ukraine Iasotin, Borispol, Baturin...I was in hundreds of villages, under a volley of fire and the din of hand grenades, domestic farms, settlements, and fishing outposts on the shores of the geese rise up into the air. Flapping their enormous white Desna and Dnieper, in steppe farms encircled by pastures, wings, they circle above peasant huts, above lakes covered in solitary little tar houses existing in a constant shadow of in water lilies, above fields and gardens. huge pine forests, and in beautiful hamlets whose thatched There is something worrisome and strange in the roofs are hidden beneath canopies of fruit trees. heavy, arduous flight, and the sharp, alarming and sorrowful If one was to gather into a single place all of the cries of these domestic birds. It is as if they are calling the stories and images that I witnessed during those days and soldiers of the Red Army to witness heartbreaking and months in Ukraine, it would amount to a horrifying book frightening images of life, as if they are rejoicing at the about colossal injustice: forced labour and secret beatings, arrival of our forces, simultaneously weeping with joy children deported to Germany, burnt houses and looted and lamenting, screaming of great losses, and of the tears warehouses, evictions onto squares and streets, pits where and blood that have aged and salted the soil of Ukraine. those suspected of having sympathy for or connections There is a long list of Ukrainian towns and villages with partisans were shot, humiliations and mockery, vulgar where I found myself while working as a special corre- cursing and bribes, drunken and erratic behaviour, and spondent for the paper Red Star. I was in Satrobel’sk, Svatov, the bestial depravity of reckless, criminal people in whose Muntsisk, Tsapuika, Voroshilovgrad, Krasnodon, Ostro, hands rested the fate, life, integrity and property of many Jewish Quarterly • 12
millions of Ukrainian people for two long years. There is locksmiths; murdered are wagon drivers, tractor drivers, no home in a single Ukrainian town or village where you chauffeurs, cabinet makers; murdered are millers, bakers, will not hear bitter and evil words about the Germans, pastry chefs, cooks; murdered are doctors, therapists, dentists, no home where tears have not flowed during these past surgeons, gynecologists; murdered are experts in bacte- two years; no home where people do not curse German riology and biochemistry, directors of university clinics, fascism; no home without an orphan or widow. These teachers of history, algebra, trigonometry; murdered are tears and curses flow like streams to an immense river of lecturers, department assistants, candidates and doctors collective grief and fury; day and night, its troubles and of science; murdered are engineers, metallurgists, bridge pain roar beneath a Ukrainian sky that has been darkened builders, architects, ship builders; murdered are pavers, by the smoke of raging fires. agronomists, field-crop growers, land surveyors; murdered There are also villages in Ukraine where one doesn’t are accountants, bookkeepers, store merchants, suppliers, hear any crying or see tear-filled eyes, villages that are managers, secretaries, night guards; murdered are teachers, ruled by silence and peace. I visited a village like this on dressmakers; murdered are grandmothers who could two occasions—the first time on 26 September, and again mend stockings and bake delicious bread, who could cook on 17 October in 1943. This village, Kozary, lies on the chicken soup and make strudel with walnuts and apples; ancient Kievan highway between Nezhiny and Kozelets. and murdered are grandmothers who didn’t know how to I visited Kozary once during the day, and another time do anything except love their children and grandchildren; on a heavy autumn night. On both occasions silence and murdered are women who were faithful to their husbands, peace ruled over Kozary—the peace and silence of death. and murdered are frivolous women; murdered are beautiful The Germans burnt seven hundred and fifty homes here young women, serious students and happy schoolgirls; before Easter, and seven hundred and fifty families were murdered are girls who were unattractive and foolish; burnt alive in these homes. No one, not a single child or murdered are hunchbacks; murdered are singers; murdered old woman emerged from the flames. In this manner the are blind people; murdered are deaf and mute people; Germans punished a village for having sheltered partisans. murdered are violinists and pianists; murdered are three- Tall, dusty weeds had sprouted from the ashes. Wells were year-old and two-year-old children; murdered are eighty- filled with sand and gardens were covered in wild grass. year-old elders who had cataracts in their dimmed eyes, cold A withered flower could be glimpsed among the weeds. transparent fingers and quiet, rustling voices like parchment; There is no one in Kozary with whom one can mourn, murdered are crying newborns who were greedily sucking no one to talk to, no one to cry to. Silence and peace at their mothers’ breasts until their final moments. All are murdered, many hundreds of thousands, millions of people. This is not the death of individuals at war who had weapons in their hands and had left behind their home, family, fields, songs, books, customs and folktales. This is the murder of a people, the murder of homes, entire families, books, faith, the murder of the tree of life; this is the death Ukraine Without Jewsof roots, and not branches or leaves; it is the murder of a people’s body and soul, the murder of life that toiled for generations to create thousands of intelligent, talented artisans and intellectuals. This is the murder of a people’s morals, customs and anecdotes passed from fathers to sons; this is the murder of memories, sad songs, and epic tales of good and bad times; it is the destruction of family homes and of burial grounds. This is the death of a people who had lived beside Ukrainian people for centuries, labouring, sinning, performing acts of kindness, and dying alongside them on one and the same earth. hang over dead bodies buried in homes that have been There are descriptions of Jews in the works of all of reduced to rubble and covered with weeds. This silence is our great writers who have depicted life in Ukraine— more horrifying than tears and curses; it is a silence more Gogol, Chekhov, Korolenko, and Gorky. How could it terrifying than moans and piercing lamentation. be otherwise? Who among us born and raised in Ukraine And it occurred to me that just as Kozary is silent, did not from their earliest years absorb a living portrait of so too are the Jews in Ukraine silent. In Ukraine there Jewish people in the cities, shtetls and villages of Ukraine? are no Jews. Nowhere—not in Poltava, Kharkov, Remember Sabbath days when elders walked with Kremenchug, Borispol, not in Iagotin. You will not see the their prayer shawls beneath poplar trees on quiet spring black, tear-filled eyes of a little girl, you will not hear the nights; remember old men standing on corners carrying sorrowful drawling voice of an old woman, you will not on sly and clever conversations among themselves; glimpse the swarthy face of a hungry child in a single city remember self-important shtetl shoemakers, sitting on or a single one of hundreds of thousands of shtetls. rickety stools in front of the rickety doors of their shops; Stillness. Silence. A people has been murdered. remember naïve, humorous signs hanging above the Murdered are elderly artisans, well-known masters of locksmith, hat-maker and tailor shops; remember bearded trades: tailors, hatmakers, shoemakers, tinsmiths, jewellers, wagon drivers showered in bags of wheat flour tied up housepainters, furriers, bookbinders; murdered are workers: in their aprons; remember old ladies in dresses offering porters, mechanics, electricians, carpenters, furnace workers, you candies and apples; curly-haired, black-eyed children 1† • Jewish Quarterly
running in the dusty streets, their curls and eyes sparkling lists, lists that did not overlook hundred-year old elders or next to the pale hair and eyes of their Ukrainian counter- newborn babies. These lists ensured the death of every last parts and mingling like flowers generously scattered upon Jew in Ukraine. the rich, soft Ukrainian soil. Our grandfathers lived here; We must remember that mass murder was carried out our mothers, and the mothers of our sons were born here. uniformly, according to strict and elaborate instructions in So much sweat and so many tears have been shed here that which provisions were made for how to murder a person no one could think to call the Jew a stranger, or say that he who was too senile to walk, and one who hadn’t yet left is alien to this land. his mother’s arms or taken his first steps. It was announced I travelled and walked this land from the northern in hundreds of towns that Jews would be sent to ghettos Donets to the Dnieper, from Voroshilovgrad in the and were required to gather fifteen kilograms of baggage; Donbass to Chernigov on the Desna; I have walked along and in hundreds of towns, they were then led to the the Dnieper and looked out at Kiev. And during all this outskirts and murdered with the latest automatic weapons. time, I met one single Jew. This was Lieutenant Shloyme Even now, even a year or two after the event, people who I travelled and walked this land from the northern Donets to the Dnieper, from Voroshilovgrad in the Donbass to Chernigov on the Desna; I have walked along the Dnieper and looked out at iev nd during all this time, I met one single ew Shmilevich Kipershtein. He fell into German entrapment happened to see these executions still weep and lose their in September of 1941 near the city Iagotin. His wife Vasilina ability to speak upon recounting the images of horror and Grigorievna Sokur, a Christian, had tried to pass him off as madness to which they became witnesses. a Moldavian. The Gestapo brought her in for interrogation It is impossible to recount the names of all the several times and came to her home two different times colonels, generals, majors, captains, and lieutenants in the suspecting that her husband was a Jew, but she insisted German army who assisted the Gestapo by organising that her husband’s name was Stepan, and his family name the execution of a people. It is impossible to recount the Novak. I met him, spoke with him, spent an entire evening names of all the soldiers, lance-corporals, senior lance- listening to his stories, and all of us—Kipershtein, his wife, corporals, non-commissioned officers, security guards and his fellow Christian neighbours, and I marvelled at the fact policemen who carried out this murder. that Kipershtein is alive and has not been killed. I did not How is this murder different from the hundreds and meet any other Jews in Ukraine. Acquaintances told me thousands of people that the Germans executed elsewhere that they had seen one Jew in Kharkov and one in Kursk; in fascist-occupied Europe? There is a difference, and it lies the writer Ilya Ehrenburg told me that he had met a Jewish in the fact that the fascists execute French, Dutch, Serbian, female partisan somewhere in southern Ukraine. But that Ukrainian, Russian and Czech people for violating fascist is all. rules and laws—hiding a switchblade or an old revolver, Where is the Jewish people? Who will ask the twentieth accidentally uttering an angry word, a young man refusing century’s Cain that dreadful question: where are the Jewish to abandon his elderly parents for a German labour camp, people who once lived in Ukraine? Where are hundreds or offering a sip of water to a partisan. But the Germans of thousands of elderly people and children? Where are execute the Jews only because of the fact that they are millions of people who three years ago toiled and lived on Jews. In their view, Jews have no right to be alive. To this earth in peaceful friendship with Ukrainians? be a Jew is the greatest transgression, a crime that can The people have been murdered, trampled in the earth. be punished only by death. That is why all the Jews in It is neither meaningful nor possible to list the names of Ukraine were murdered, and that is why they were killed every victim, for all of them are equally innocent and must in many countries in Europe. The majority of those killed be counted, regardless of whether they were famous and were old women, the elderly, sick people and children. The world-renowned scholars, or whether they were unknown, reason for this is that able-bodied men, women and youth barely literate women living in quiet shtetls far from any were able to retreat along with the Red Army and are now railroads. Why name some of the victims but remain silent either fighting in its ranks or working on its behalf. Those about others? But it is impossible to list an entire people who stayed behind in Ukraine did not have the strength by name. There is no sense in, and no possibility of naming to leave. It was these people—old people, sick people all the places where Jews were murdered in great numbers and children—whom the Germans killed in cold blood, during the fall of 1941 and summer of 1942. These annihilating all of them to a man. executions took place in every large and small city and in As long as humanity has existed on earth, there has every shtetl. The only thing that must be said is that if there never been a murder of innocent and defenceless people were 100 Jews living in a small town, then 100 Jews were as organised, massive, and as cruel as this one. This is the slaughtered, nowhere a single person less. If 55,000 Jews greatest crime ever committed in history, and history has lived in a city, then in that city 55,000 Jews were killed, known many crimes; it is written with blood. This is a and never a single person less. These massacres, we must matter of the murder of an entire people, the slaughter of understand, were carried out according to finely detailed millions of defenceless children, women and elders. Jewish Quarterly • 1…
The Jews of Ukraine are no more. When the war is over, will we tell the German people, Human consciousness is built in such an unfortunate, ‘You are murderers: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’? though perhaps also fortunate way that when people read Will we avenge the murder of a people by killing another? or hear about a tragedy that has claimed millions of peoples’ No. Democracy’s victory will not only be a victory lives, they are simply incapable of understanding the of weapons. There will be a true victory when the dark horrifying profundity of what took place. This limitation force of racism is finally reduced to ashes. Germans will is a fortunate attribute of human consciousness because understand that the idea of racial exceptionalism is a it protects people from moral suffering and insanity. This criminal and false one, and that their happiness and peace limit of human knowledge is equally terrible because it are not the only sacred things in the world. This victory enables people to be lenient, superficial and morally passive. will endure because of the mighty power of weapons, But in this era, it seems to me, the life of individuals and which will force the Germans to know always that all entire peoples has been devalued, and the value of personal people are equally entitled to life on earth. The raised freedom has been trampled under the boot of German- sword is answered with the language of the sword. This is fascist dogma—and it is precisely now, as never before, that the sacred logic and morality of contemporary war. demands for moral purity and righteousness must be raised But today we are still at war, and Hitler’s obedient to unattainable heights, both with respect to our individual murderous gang, fascist Germany, is spilling innocent lives and to the State. It is not only Europe, but in fact all blood. of humanity that stands on the threshold of extinction. I had the chance to talk to dozens of German POWs. This immense earth has been transformed into a wasteland, Our conversations took place amidst the smoky ruins of thousands of its great cities have been blown up and burned devastated cities and villages. We talked about mass murder, down. The world war has taken millions of people who, like about executions of Ukrainian and Russian populations, animals, live in pits and trenches, and flung them backwards and about the complete destruction of the Jewish people, to prehistoric times. H.G. Wells’ most dismal fantasies about and I did not once detect in them a sense of humiliation, imminent global catastrophe seem like harmless folktales in despair, or desire to disavow the disgraceful crimes comparison to present-day reality. associated with the name of Germany. With extraordinary This seething, amoral force came from National- naiveté, all of them espoused the view that ‘crimes against Socialist Germany. humanity’ are not really crimes because their purpose is It was born from a sense of German racial exclusivity, to benefit Germany. These soldiers could explain every from the deep and heartfelt conviction held by contem- act in terms of its instrumental value, and many of them porary Germans that they are the chosen people; that said that the execution of the Jewish people had in fact their happiness, tranquility and security are the only turned out to be useless, and that mass murder and the sacred things on earth. This is an ideology of exclusivity, burning of hundreds and thousands of villages had not of suspicion and indifference to the suffering of other brought Germany the advantages that had been expected nations, and of sentimental pathos for one’s own people. from these measures. It is from this point of view that they ntisemitism beame the universal weapon of fasism war against ewry is a formula suited to the war that Germany wanted to wage against the world This consciousness is the scourge of present day humanity, judged the massive crimes committed by Germany. and it was aroused in Germany. It has led her down a path Why did National-Socialist Germany become the of bloody crimes, and it shall bring her to the precipice of executioner of the Jewish people? I want to raise this cruel defeat. particular question not only because I myself am a Jew, In our times, the equality of all people constitutes the and not only because those closest to me were victims of highest moral principle of humanity. fascist bloodshed. Racism is the exact opposite of this principle. The treatment of Jews expressed contemporary fascist People will ask me, ‘are the Germans a nation of German ideology and tactics in their crudest and most murderers and criminals, then?’ complete and final form. The Germans did not commit No! For we believe in the great principle of equality such bestial, inhumane violence, lacking all traces of of the world’s peoples. We know that the German people humanity, against any other people on earth. For fascism, have not only produced Hitler, Goebbels, Goering hatred for the Jews became paramount; it was the fuel for its and Rozenberg; not just the Hohenzollern and Krupp fire. Antisemitism became the universal weapon of fascism. dynasties; not only Stennes and Guderian, Ley and The significance of antisemitism lies in the fact that Ribbentrop, Horst Wessel and Nietzsche. This is the same a war against Jewry is a formula suited to the war that people who produced Kant, Goethe, Hegel, Feurbach, Germany wanted to wage against the world. Given Marx, Engels, and the great martyr Liebnekht. It produced present circumstances, Jews do not have their own state, the enlightened wisdom and pure soul of August Bebel, and are scattered across all parts of the world. One finds and has borne thousands of proletarian fighters, hundreds Jews among American capitalists, English social activists, of humane and modest social and scholarly activists, and Russian communists, and French anarcho-syndicalists. many kind women and sincere old workers. This is very convenient for a state and people that have 1™ • Jewish Quarterly
raised the black flag of war against all states and all peoples one needs your talents or knowledge. You, salt of the earth, of the world. By selecting the Jews as victims of its are doomed to become waiters and taxi drivers. Don’t you demagogy, National-Socialism freed its hand against every see the cold and merciless eyes of world Jewry gazing at nation and social class. It was able to declare war both on you like a fog encircling Germany? Let us fight on behalf Marxism and the new structure of Russian society, and of our national honor and trampled earth, let us together on plutocratic England, America and France; in a word, it extinguish the decaying world of Jewry.’ was able to declare war against the world. This choice of Having reached this dead end, Germany blindly victims constituted the first decision made by the criminal, followed National-Socialism. It was pushed onto this path jingoist National-Socialists. by defeat and reaction. But not by these things alone, no. Antisemitism has always been the banner, weapon Germany had been prepared for this path over the centuries and wool used by reactionaries to blindfold the masses. by a culture of national and political egoism. Germany It has always been an opiate in dark times when ruling had never lost faith in the strength of its clenched fist to minorities sought to deceive the masses, and deflect the knock the world flat. It had always continued to believe righteous anger of the oppressed. National-Socialism came in the sanctity of righteous war, and regarded the strategic to power in Germany during a period when reaction had plans of its military as its highest social ethic. And so, ten gripped every stratum and class within German society. years ago Germany finally became wedded to National- Reactionary politics won out in Germany after its defeat Socialism. The explosive interaction of historical factors in the imperialist war of 1914. Blinded by national egoism, and a reactionary atmosphere became the second reason every strata of German society had invested different why National-Socialism felt compelled to choose the hopes in an eventual victory. But the war failed to resolve Jewish people as victims of its criminal demagogy. the conflicts of the modern capitalist world, and the Treaty And the final reason: fascism is profoundly opposed to of Versailles proved equally unable to resolve them. The the idea of equality among nations, of the brotherhood and solution to these conflicts lies in the great and sacred unity of all peoples of the world. The foundational principle principles of brotherhood and equality of all peoples; it of fascism, after all, is a belief in the master German race. lies in the eradication of imperialistic conflict between Fascism therefore decided to construct a great ladder of states, the elimination of class structure in society, and in forced labour of nations. It resolved to poison each nation the creation of a collective means of production and a just against all others: to place the Dutch and Danes on the distribution of goods. highest rungs of the ladder of punishment in order to But to its own misfortune, humanity did not have the show them that they are better off than the Norwegians strength to complete this task. and French; to poison the French with an awareness of At that point, National-Socialism led onto the execu- the petty privileges they have over the Czechs and Greeks; tioner’s block a universal and eternal, tried and true, to place the Serbs further down, and appease them with defenceless and therefore desirable enemy: the Jew. With the fact that Ukrainians and Belorussians stand below no law and no army to defend him, the Jew is an optimal them on the bottom rungs. And finally, fascism resolved to target for the wrath of a weak underdog. frighten this whole entire colony of peoples, its ladder of ‘You fear proletarian revolution,’ the Nazis told oppression, with the horrible abyss of non-existence it had Germany’s capitalists, ‘you fear communism, which is a prepared for the Jewish people. Do itler and the German fasist leaders all truly believe that ews are Germany s foremost enemies, or that their annihilation is neessary for Germany s happiness €f ourse not ‚hese people onsiously produed this bloody propaganda hundred times more frightening to you than the Versailles But for fascism it was not enough to scare the Treaty. We too fear the proletarian revolution. Let us unite Ukrainians with the destruction of the Jewish people, or to against the Jews. They are, after all, the eternal origin of placate their fear with the notion that they had at least been trouble and bloody rebellion; it is they who as orators and granted existence on the ladder of forced labour. Fascism authors of revolutionary books inflame and agitate the hoped for more than this; it hoped to infect Ukrainians masses; they who created the idea of class struggle and with hatred for the Jews and to deceive them by spreading proletarian revolution!’ the idea that Jews were to blame for all the poverty, To the toiling German masses the Nazis said, ‘You misfortune and burdens that had devastated Ukraine. suffer the consequences of the Versailles Treaty; you are The principle to divide and conquer, and to poison hungry and out of work. The heavy burden of reparations enslaved and doomed nations with hatred for one another has fallen on your weary backs. But just look at whose was the third factor that compelled Adolf Hitler to embark hands turn the wheel—it is the hands of Jewish tycoons, on a bloody provocation, and to lead millions of defenceless Jewish bankers, kings without crowns in America, France women, elderly people and children to the executioner’s and England. Your enemies are our enemies; come, and let block. us fight together.’ Do Hitler and the German fascist leaders all truly Addressing the German intelligentsia, the Nazis said believe that Jews are Germany’s foremost enemies, or that ‘You are humiliated, your ideals have been shattered. No their annihilation is necessary for Germany’s happiness? Jewish Quarterly • 1ž
Of course not. These people consciously produced this did not sense that Russian people had changed at all, and bloody propaganda. They are unprincipled by the very this meant that some other people who were not Russians fact of their existence, and people without principles do had introduced the new qualities into life. These were the not possess and are not capable of possessing any beliefs. Jews: people who had no love for the system of Russian Their actions are guided solely by temporary circum- patriarchy, and no connection to the soil; people who stances and pragmatism. While I may disagree with were driven only by a hunger for profit, and who regarded President Roosevelt on several issues, I am absolutely the toiling masses with cold indifference. Dostoevsky saw certain that regardless of how much circumstances might these features in the Jewish merchant and developed a change, Roosevelt’s principles would remain the same. profound hatred for him. But the one thing he failed to There is infinitely greater integrity, honesty and room for understand was that by looking at the Jewish trader, Jewish partnership in this persistence of values (even regarding leaser, and Jewish middle-man, he was only gazing at a matters where there are great differences of opinion), than mirror that showed him a magnified image of the new there is in the conformism, deceit, and sudden shifts of Russian bourgeoisie, frantically evolving in hundreds and sham ideology that constitutes the extremes of German thousands of Russian villages, provincial cities, capitals and National-Socialism. far-flung hamlets. At this point I wish to express some ideas about the This phenomenon has repeated itself throughout all inner essence of antisemitism. of Jewish history. The medieval Spanish inquisition that ƒy endowing ews with the traits, laws and riminal intentions that were raging in their very own hearts, …ational†‡oialism fatefully repeated what previous antisemites had done throughout the ages Antisemitism exists in every country in the world and burned Jews at the stake did not grasp the fact that it has existed throughout human history. It can be found even held up the Jews as a mirror of its own rigid intolerance, in contemporary democratic states. Its character changes orthodoxy and backwards prejudice; that by burning Jews, in different times and places, of course. Antisemitism in it was contending with flaws that had grown up inside its England and antisemitism in tsarist Russia are not the own heart. When Russian reactionary thinkers perceived same thing. Its appearance depends on reactionary forces, the Jews as the source of a revolutionary epidemic, they such as deceitful attempts of ruling powers to explain and did not and perhaps could not know that they were seeing ameliorate social and ideological discontent. Antisemitism a reflection of a Russia that was unconsciously birthing a is a paradigmatic conflict with no solution. The period of revolution in thousands of its factories, plants and mines, post-revolutionary reaction in Russia between 1905 and and in its universities and army barracks. Ideological 1911 has become known for bloody Jewish pogroms and antisemitism cannot and does not want to understand this. charges of ritual murder. But the great Russian Revolution One can put it this way: ‘Tell me what you blame on the was a period of history that did not know antisemitism. Jews, and I will tell you what you are guilty of yourself.’ Here I am speaking of state antisemitism, that is, of the What did the Nazis blame on the Jews? willful incitement of antisemitism by a government They accused them of the seven deadly sins. The apparatus. paradoxical, remarkable thing is that the portrait that the In addition to state antisemitism, there is also so-called Nazis painted of Jews—their supposedly fanatical racism, ‘ideological’ antisemitism. Ideological antisemitism is thirst for global power, hunger to enslave and recklessly rule a phenomenon born of a physiological need to explain over humankind—was in fact a self-portrait. By endowing human and global problems by examining them in a Jews with the traits, flaws and criminal intentions that looking glass rather a mirror. One finds ideological were raging in their very own hearts, National-Socialism antisemites primarily among educated people. When the fatefully repeated what previous antisemites had done great Dostoevsky blamed the Jews for impoverishing throughout the ages. the masses in Russia’s borderlands, he merely substituted The Germans are now being expelled from Ukraine. the invisible and mysterious historical process that had Every day the glorious, weary earth is being liberated, as produced bourgeois, feudal Russian society with the idea if a flood of muddy, filthy German hatred is receding and that Jewish commercial circles had supposedly invaded in its wake, bread is once again beginning to rise, hunched Russia. Mid-nineteenth century Russia experienced an black trees, bushes and forests are straightening themselves intense growth in capitalist relations. Petty buyers and out, and the sun and wind are drying out soil that is soaked sellers, small factory owners, and contractors began to with blood and tears. People are speaking in normal voices appear everywhere, destroying the old means of production again and looking at the world with open eyes. Millions of to benefit themselves, and ruining idyllic relations between people have been freed from slavery. feudal lords and their serfs. Ukraine was one of the fascists’ most important prizes. Dostoevsky saw the new relations, but he did not, Its discussions about Ukraine had begun as early as 1933. or perhaps could not see the new qualities and types of And now, it is in the process of losing—it has already lost— Russian people—the plundering buyers, merciless leasers, Ukraine. Fascism failed to understand (how could it possibly and greedy factory owners—who accompanied them. He understand?) the strength of our people’s resistance, their great 1Ÿ • Jewish Quarterly
spirit and undying sense of human worth. Fascism did not working, growing old and dying beside them on the same understand the power of the Soviet system! A system that earth, and working people have always been free and estranged endured trials of adversity in the Revolution, Civil War and from antisemitism in all of its forms. Towns with large Jewish period of great construction. Fascism misunderstood and populations like Berdichev had never even known antisem- underestimated the friendship of nations among the peoples itism. Ukrainians, Russians, Poles and Jews always lived and of the Soviet Union, and crudely dismissed the Union as a worked together in friendship in these towns. ‘geographic concept.’ Fascism was incapable of fathoming that And so a great people, simple and wise, figured out the Soviet Union is the noble, triumphant and courageous the eternal tragedy of the Jewish people, and understood soul of liberated humanity. something that many educated reactionaries could not: they Fascism did not gauge the strength of our Red Army; its understood the inner essence of antisemitism. The people powerful reserves, courage, technical power. It failed to see that knew that the Germans were themselves guilty of whatever this army is immortal, that its generals, soldiers, tanks, guns crimes they had blamed on the Jews, that the concepts of and planes are the creations of an immortal people. With its world domination, bloody racism, suspicion, and hatred had boorish, small and primitive mind fascism attempted to change been imported by the fascists themselves. The people knew the march of history. German fascism understood nothing and who had tormented, humiliated and robbed them; they was mistaken in everything. understood why the Germans shouted day and night about The Germans failed to deceive Ukraine because its people the criminal Juden. Once they understood this, they bowed cannot be deceived. The senseless and horrifying murder their heads in sympathy and grief for the executed Jews, and of elders, women and children transformed Ukraine into a with silent contempt, they clenched their teeth and glared at nightmare. In Ukrainian towns and villages, people speak with the Nazis. profound empathy for the victims, and with repulsive hatred The people understood the inner essence of fascist for the butchers who committed a mass murder of Jews in the antisemitism, and with their simple and wise vision, they saw fall of 1941 and summer of 1942. through a mirror of lies and looked deep into the eyes of the Khristia Chuniak, a forty year old peasant from the village butchers of modern humanity. This is how they defeated the Krasilovka, in the Brovary district of Kiev oblast, described to goal of National-Socialism, a goal that led Germany to put an me how the Germans led a Jewish doctor named Feldman to entire people on the executioner’s block, and commit a crime be executed in Brovary. This Feldman was an old bachelor who unprecedented in all of human history. had adopted two Christian boys and was loved by everyone. In gullies and deep ravines, in anti-tank ditches of sand A group of weeping and lamenting peasants went to appeal and clay, under heavy black soil, and in swamps and pits, there to the German commanding officer so that he would spare lie hastily flung bodies of professors and workers, doctors and Feldman’s life. The women’s tears moved the commander, and students, old people and children. he agreed. This was in the fall of 1941. Feldman continued to No sound of tears or moaning; no sight of faces drawn live and work as a doctor in Brovary, and he was executed in from suffering. Jews are silent with the dreadful silence of the the spring of 1943. Khristia Chuniak described how the old village Kozary on the old highway to Kiev. man had to dig his own grave; apparently he had to die alone, The wind carries sand onto enormous common graves. for by the spring of 1943 there were no longer any living Jews. Grass has grown on the fields of death. Tall poplar trees flutter As she came to the end of the story, she sobbed and openly above the earth, like dark flags folded in a sign of mourning. wept. The sorrow-filled words of this simple story expressed Silence and peace. with astonishing clarity Ukraine’s relationship to its murdered Oh, if the murdered people could be revived for an J e wr y. instant, if the ground above Babi Yar in Kiev or Ostraia No one believed the fascist propaganda that Jews were Mogila in Voroshilovgrad could be lifted, if a penetrating preparing to enslave Ukraine and take over the world. cry came forth from hundreds and thousands of lips Ukrainians were familiar with Jews after generations of covered in soil, then the Universe would shudder. The iddish version ‘Ukraina on yidn’ aeared in Einikayt on ove€er ‚ƒ„… and †ece€er ‚ƒ„…‡ for the Russian €ackˆtranslation fro the iddish‰ see ‘Ukraina €ez evreev‰’ transŠ Rokhl Bauvol’‰ in Vasilii ‹rossan‰ a evreiski tei‰ edŠ Shion Œarkish ŽJerusale‘ Bi€lioteka ’liya‰ ‚ƒ“” volŠ‘………ˆ…„•Š The colete Russian version of ‘Ukraina €ez evreev’ on –hich the resent translation is €ased ay €e found in VEK‘ Vestnik Evreiskoi Kultury‰ noŠ „ ŽRi—a‰ ‚ƒƒ•”‘ ‚ˆ“ Notes‘ †esna and †nieer‘ The †nieer is one of the lar—est rivers in Euroe and lo–s south fro Russia throu—h Belorus and Ukraine to the Black SeaŠ The †esna is a left tri€utary of the †nieer in northeastern UkraineŠ Kozary‘ villa—e aro™iately ‚•• k northeast of KievŠ Before Easter‘ €ased on this descrition‰ it is likely that the to–n –as destroyed in early ’ril of ‚ƒ„Š šeriod of —reat construction‘ refers to Stalin’s accelerated develoent of heavy industry in the Soviet Union durin— the ‚ƒ…•sŠ Ba€i ›ar in Kiev or œstraia Œo—ila in Voroshilov—rad‘ Œass —ravesŠ Ba€i ›ar –as a ravine north–est of Kiev –here it is estiated that azis shot to death €et–een ‚••‰••• and ‚•‰••• Je–s on ƒ and …• Sete€er‰ ‚ƒ„‚Š œstraia Œo—ila lies outside Voroshilov—rad Žno– Lu—ansk”‰ in the †on€ass re—ion of eastern Ukraine‰ –here it is estiated that azis shot to death €et–een ‚‰“•• and …‰••• Je–s fro the surroundˆ in— area on ‚ ove€er ‚ƒ„Š Published with the kind permission of the Grossman ˆstate, ourtesy of ndrew …urnberg ssoiates ‰td Jewish Quarterly • 1˜