Soviet Holocaust Literature

It has long been assumed that there was no Holocaust memory in the Soviet Union. Official Soviet ideology lumped the 1.5 million Soviet Jews exterminated by the Nazis into the 26 million Soviet war deaths. So, the little Holocaust memory that existed was hidden away in families and communities. Recent scholarship, however, has painted a more complicated picture. Yes, official Holocaust memory was circumscribed. And, true, many privately commemorated its memory. But, as a new collection of Soviet Holocaust fiction, translated by Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav, shows that there was published Holocaust literature in the Soviet Union. Especially in the Yiddish language journal, Sovetish Heymland. How did Soviet authors treat the Holocaust? How did it differ from work elsewhere? And what are some of the challenges translating these works into English? To find out more, the Eurasian Knot spoke to Sasha and Harriet about their recent collection, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union, published by Stanford University Press.

Guests:

Sasha Senderovich is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures and of International Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of How the Soviet Jew Was Made. 

Harriet Murav is Center for Advanced Study Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her most recent book is As the Dust of the Earth: The Literature of Abandonment in Revolutionary Russia and Ukraine.

They are the translators of In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union, published by Stanford University Press.

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