The Holocaust in the Soviet Union was the Nazi German and Romanian persecution of Jews, Roma and homosexuals as part of the Holocaust in World War II. It may also refer to the Holocaust in the Baltic states, annexed by the Soviet Union before the start of Operation Barbarossa.

At the start of the conflict, there were estimated to be approximately five million Jews in the Soviet Union of whom four million lived in the regions occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941 and 1942. The majority of Soviet Jews murdered in the Holocaust were killed in the first nine months of the occupation during the so-called Holocaust by Bullets. Approximately 1.5 million Jews succeeded in fleeing eastwards into Soviet territory; it is thought that 1.152 million Soviet Jews had been murdered by December 1942.[1] In total, at least 2 million Soviet Jews were murdered.[2][3]

Background

Main article: History of the Jews in the Soviet Union
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The Holocaust by Soviet Socialist Republic

Soviet policy and response

Approximately 300,000 to 500,000 Soviet Jews served in the Red Army during the conflict.[4] The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, established in 1941, was active in propagandising for the Soviet war effort but was treated with suspicion. The Soviet press, tightly censored, often deliberately obscured the particular anti-Jewish motivation of the Holocaust.[5]

See also

References

  1. ^ Overy 1998, p. 142.
  2. ^ Benz, Wolfgang (1999). The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide (1st ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 152–153. ISBN 0-231-11215-7.
  3. ^ Wolff, Sierra (2021-10-01). "The Holocaust in the Soviet Union". Illinois Holocaust Museum. Retrieved 2024-04-12.
  4. ^ Altshuler 2014, p. 16.
  5. ^ Berkhoff 2009, p. [page needed].

Works cited

Further reading

External links

The Holocaust
Jews and Judaism in the Soviet Union
Categories