The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry

Front Cover
David Patterson
Transaction Publishers, 2003 M06 1 - 579 pages

The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewryis a collection of eyewitness testimonies, letters, diaries, affidavits, and other documents on the activities of the Nazis against Jews in the camps, ghettoes, and towns of Eastern Europe. Arguably, the only apt comparism is to The Gulag Archipelago of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This definitive edition of The Black Book, including for the first time materials omitted from previous editions, is a major addition to the literature on the Holocaust. It will be of particular interest to students, teachers, and scholars of the Holocaust and those interested in the history of Europe.

By the end of 1942, 1.4 million Jews had been killed by the Einsatzgruppen that followed the German army eastward; by the end of the war, nearly two million had been murdered in Russia and Eastern Europe. Of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, about one-third fell in the territories of the USSR. The single most important text documenting that slaughter is The Black Book, compiled by two renowned Russian authors Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman. Until now, The Black Book was only available in English in truncated editions. Because of its profound significance, this new and definitive English translation of The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry is a major literary and intellectual event.

From the time of the outbreak of the war, Ehrenburg and Grossman collected the eyewitness testimonies that went into The Black Book. As early as 1943 they were planning its publication; the first edition appeared in 1944. During the years immediately after the war, Grossman assisted Ehrenburg in compiling additional materials for a second edition, which appeared in 1946 (in English as well as Russian).

Since the fall of the Soviet regime, Irina Ehrenburg, the daughter of Ilya Ehrenburg, has recovered the lost portions of the manuscript sent to Yad Vashem. The texts recovered by Ms. Ehrenburg include numerous documents that had been censored from the original manuscript, as well as items that had been hidden by the Grossman family. In addition, she verified and, where appropriate, corrected the accuracy of documents that had already appeared in earlier editions of The Black Book.

 

Selected pages

Contents

Babi Yar an article based on documentary materials and depositions
12
The Murder of the Jews of Berdichev by Vasily Grossman
21
In the Town of Chmelnik Vinnitsa District reported by A I Bekker
27
Pyotr Chepurenko Witness to the Piryatin Massacre
41
A Letter from Military Officer Granovsky Ekaterinopol
49
3
85
The Story of Lily Herts Lvov
86
A Letter from an Intelligence Officer Lvov District
92
The Hunters
243
28
262
The United Partisan Organization of the Vilna Ghetto UPO
268
The Death Forts of Kovno Kaunas by Meir Elin
314
The Kovno Ghetto Fighters by I Iosade
326
Doctor Elena BuividaiteKutorgene reported by G Osherovich
333
The Story of Galina Masyulis
368
Riga by Captain E Gekhtman
379

A Letter from Syunya Deresh Izyaslav
98
12
104
The Minsk Ghetto materials provided by A Machiz Grechanik L Gleizer
109
Leaders of the Underground Fighters in the Minsk Ghetto by G Smolyar
138
The Young Women from Minsk reported by Semyon Bank
154
The Story of Engineer Pikman from Mozyr Basya Pikman
169
Brest Depositions and Documentary Testimony of the Residents of Brest
176
prepared for publication by Margarita Aliger
184
Liozno reported by B Chernyakova prepared for publication
188
In Bialystok prepared for publication by R Kovnator
197
The Story of Two Workers in the City
203
The Smolensk Area prepared for publication by Ilya Ehrenburg
211
Doctor Kremenchuzhsky prepared for publication by Ilya Ehrenburg
217
The Story of Iosif Vaingertner a Fisherman from Kerch prepared
223
Murder in Dzhankoy prepared for publication by L Kvitko
231
The Vilna Ghetto by A Sutskever translated from the Yiddish
241
From the Notebook of the Sculptor Elik Rivosh Riga
396
prepared for publication by Vasily Grossman and R Kovnator 396
411
A Letter from Officers Levchenko Borisov and Chesnokov
419
The Teachers Golneva Terekhova and Timofeeva reported by Khana
426
The Roman Catholic Priest Bronyus Paukshtis by Girsh Osherovich
435
In the Khorol Concentration Camp reported by A Reznichenko
453
The Children from the Black Road by V Apresyan
483
The Report of the Special State Commission for the Verification and Investigation
500
At Auschwitz the German Executioners Murdered Citizens of Every
506
Calling the GermanFascists to a Serious Accounting
514
The Story of Mordecai
522
The Story of Former Prisoner of War M Scheinman
532
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by B Mark
542
The Racial Politics of Hitlerism and AntiSemitism
561
Protocol of the Interrogation of Wilhelm Sudbrak
578
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