Map used to illustrate Stahlecker's report to Heydrich on January 31, 1942

The Holocaust in Russia is the Nazi crimes during the occupation of

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

(

Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...

) by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

On the Eve of the Holocaust

The

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

did grant official "equality of all citizens regardless of

status Status (Latin plural: ''statūs''), is a state, condition, or situation, and may refer to: * Status (law) ** City status ** Legal status, in law ** Political status, in international law ** Small entity status, in patent law ** Status confere ...

, sex,

race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...

, religion, and nationality." The years before

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

were an era of rapid change for Soviet

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

, leaving behind the dreadful poverty of the

Pale of Settlement The Pale of Settlement (russian: Черта́ осе́длости, '; yi, דער תּחום-המושבֿ, '; he, תְּחוּם הַמּוֹשָב, ') was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 19 ...

. 40% of the population in the former Pale left for large cities within the Soviet Union. Emphasis on education and movement from countryside ''

shtetl A shtetl or shtetel (; yi, שטעטל, translit=shtetl (singular); שטעטלעך, romanized: ''shtetlekh'' (plural)) is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before ...

s'' to newly industrialized cities allowed many Soviet Jews to enjoy overall advances under

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

and to become one of the most educated population groups in the world. Due to Stalinist emphasis on its

urban population An urban area, built-up area or urban agglomeration is a human settlement with a high population density and infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas are created through urbanization and are categorized by urban morphology as cities, ...

, interwar migration inadvertently rescued countless Soviet Jews—

penetrated the entire former Jewish Pale, but were kilometers short of

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

and

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

World War II

On 22 June 1941,

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

abruptly broke the non−aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union. The Soviet territories occupied by early 1942, including all of Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine and most Russian territory west of the line Leningrad–Moscow–Rostov, contained about four million Jews, including hundreds of thousands who had fled Poland in 1939. Despite the chaos of the Soviet retreat, some effort was made to evacuate Jews, who were either employed in the military industries or were family members of servicemen. Of 4 million about a million succeeded in escaping further east. The "Holocaust by bullet" was the task of SS death squads called '' Einsatzgruppen'', under the overall command of

Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...

. These had been used on a limited scale in Poland in 1939, but were now organized on a much larger scale. Most of their victims were defenseless Jewish civilians (not a single ''Einsatzgruppe'' member was killed in action during these operations). They used their skills to become efficient killers, according to

Michael Berenbaum Michael Berenbaum (born July 31, 1945, in Newark, New Jersey) is an American scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and filmmaker, who specializes in the study of the Holocaust. He served as deputy director of the President's Commission on the Holo ...

. Berenbaum, Michael. ''The World Must Know''. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2nd edition, 2006, p. 93. By the end of 1941, however, the ''Einsatzgruppen'' had killed only 15 percent of the Jews in the occupied Soviet territories, and it was apparent that these methods could not be used to kill all the Jews of Europe. Even before the invasion of the Soviet Union, experiments with killing Jews in the back of vans using gas from the van's exhaust had been carried out, and when this proved too slow, more lethal gasses were tried. Units of the Wehrmacht also participated in many aspects of the Holocaust in Russia.

The Holocaust in the RSFSR

The Black Book of Soviet Jewry contains a section on occupied Russia, with testimonies about the Holocaust in

Smolensk Smolensk ( rus, Смоленск, p=smɐˈlʲensk, a=smolensk_ru.ogg) is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, west-southwest of Moscow. First mentioned in 863, it is one of the oldest ...

, Rostov-on-Don, Yessentuki, Kislovodsk and

Stavropol Stavropol (; rus, Ставрополь, p=ˈstavrəpəlʲ) is a city and the administrative centre of Stavropol Krai, Russia. As of the 2021 Census, its population was 547,820, making it one of Russia's fastest growing cities. It was known as ...

among others. It is estimated by some that before the war, 130,000 Jews lived in parts of the RSFRS that would be later be occupied. The majority evacuated eastward, and a report written by Einsatzgruppen mentions the massive flight. Most of the Jews who remained in occupied RSFSR territories with the advance of the Wehrmacht were murdered by the beginning of 1942, except for some in the southern areas who were murdered between spring 1942 and winter 1942-1943. The YIVO encyclopedia places the number of Holocaust victims in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic at over 119,000. This is because while much of the local Jewish population escaped, many refugees from places further west fled to these areas, only for them to be captured later. According to this source, most Holocaust victims in the RSFSR were murdered in the areas of Rostov-on-Don,

Krasnodar Krasnodar (; rus, Краснода́р, p=krəsnɐˈdar; ady, Краснодар), formerly Yekaterinodar (until 1920), is the largest city and the administrative centre of Krasnodar Krai, Russia. The city stands on the Kuban River in southe ...

and

Bryansk Bryansk ( rus, Брянск, p=brʲansk) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Bryansk Oblast, Russia, situated on the Desna (river), River Desna, southwest of Moscow. Population: Geography Urban la ...

Aftermath

The Nazi Genocide of the Jews carried by German '' Einsatzgruppen'', and ''

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...

'' along with local collaborators resulted in almost complete annihilation of the Jewish population over the entire territory temporarily occupied by Germany and its allies. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Léon Poliakov Léon Poliakov (russian: Лев Поляков; 25 November 1910, Saint Petersburg – 8 December 1997, Orsay) was a French historian who wrote extensively on the Holocaust and antisemitism and wrote ''The Aryan Myth''. Born into a Russian Jewi ...

established the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (1943) and after the war, he assisted

Edgar Faure Edgar Jean Faure (; 18 August 1908 – 30 March 1988) was a French politician, lawyer, essayist, historian and memoirist who served as Prime Minister of France in 1952 and again between 1955 and 1956.Nuremberg Trial. In July 1943, a Soviet military court in

held the first

war crimes trial A war crimes trial is the trial of persons charged with criminal violation of the laws and customs of war and related principles of international law committed during armed conflict. History The trial of Peter von Hagenbach by an ad hoc tribun ...

. There were 11 defendants, all of whom were collaborators. They were each charged with treason for helping the Germans murder 7000 people during the occupation of Krasnodar. All but one of the defendants were members of the death squad Sonderkommando 10a, a subunit of Einsatzgruppe D. All of the defendants pleaded guilty and begged for leniency. Eight of them were sentenced to death and publicly hanged on 18 July 1943, the day after sentencing. The other three were deemed to have had relatively minor roles and were instead each sentenced to 20 years of hard labour. While outside observers viewed the proceedings as a show trial, they did not doubt the severity or the extent of the crimes themselves, nor the guilt of the defendants. Observers said the true purpose of the trial was to showcase the suffering of Soviet civilians and deter further collaboration.

Massacres

* Gully of Petrushino, near

Taganrog Taganrog ( rus, Таганрог, p=təɡɐnˈrok) is a port city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, on the north shore of the Taganrog Bay in the Sea of Azov, several kilometers west of the mouth of the Don River. Population: History of Taganrog Th ...

, October 1941

After World War II

Following the war, the Soviet Union suppressed or downplayed the impact of Nazi crimes on its Jewish citizens. An anti-Semitic campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans" (i.e. " Zionists") followed. On 12 August 1952, in the event known as the

Night of the Murdered Poets The Night of the Murdered Poets (; yi, הרוגי מלכות פֿונעם ראַטנפאַרבאַנד, translit=Harugey malkus funem Ratnfarband, lit=Soviet Union Martyrs) was the execution of thirteen Soviet Jews in the Lubyanka Prison in Mosco ...

, thirteen most prominent

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

writers, poets, actors and other intellectuals were executed on the orders of Joseph Stalin, among them

Peretz Markish Peretz Davidovich Markish ( yi, פּרץ מאַרקיש ) (russian: Перец Давидович Маркиш) (7 December 1895 (25 November OS) – 12 August 1952) was a Russian Jewish poet and playwright who wrote predominantly in Yiddish. ...

Leib Kvitko Leyb Moiseyevich Kvitko (russian: Лев Моисе́евич Кви́тко, yi, לייב קוויטקאָ) (October 15, 1890 – August 12, 1952) was a prominent Yiddish poet, an author of well-known children's poems and a member of the Je ...

, David Hofstein,

Itzik Feffer Itzik Feffer (10 September 1900 – 12 August 1952), also Fefer (Yiddish איציק פֿעפֿער, Russian Ицик Фефер, Исаàк Соломòнович Фèфер) was a Soviet Yiddish poet executed on the Night of the Murdered Poe ...

and David Bergelson.

Research

The

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...

's Mandel Center's Initiative on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union works to gain a better understanding of this developing subfield and unearth the crimes and casualties. The Mandel Center partnered with various international organizations such as the International Centre for History and Sociology of World War II and its Consequences at the

National Research University Higher School of Economics HSE University (russian: link=no, «Высшая школа экономики», ВШЭ), officially the National Research University Higher School of Economics (russian: link=no, Национальный исследовательский ун ...

, The Yiddish Language Institute, the Center for Judaic Studies at the

University of Latvia University of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Universitāte, shortened ''LU'') is a state-run university located in Riga, Latvia established in 1919. The ''QS World University Rankings'' places the university between 801st and 1000th globally, seventh ...

, the Museum “Jews in Latvia",

Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Kyiv University or Shevchenko University or officially the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv ( uk, Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка), colloquially known as KNU ...

, the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies, and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.