The Forbidden Tragedy: History and Memory of the Shoah in the Soviet Union

Nearly three million Soviet Jews died in the Holocaust, but unlike other Jews in East Europe, Soviet Jews were not sent to concentration camps. Instead they were killed where they lived, in their villages and towns. Professor Anna Shternshis, University of Toronto, examines the scale of the Holocaust in the U.S.S.R, its impact on Soviet Jewry, and how archival materials—released only with the collapse of the Soviet Union—provided new insights about this aspect of Holocaust history. A film screening of Ladies' Tailor follows Professor Shternshis's talk.

Ladies’ Tailor was selected by Olga Gershenson, Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her most recent book, The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe (Rutgers University Press) traces the unknown, forgotten, or banned Holocaust films in the Soviet Union. Visit phantomholocaust.org for more information.

About the Speaker

Anna Shternshis is the Al and Malka Green Associate Professor of Yiddish in the German Department at the University of Toronto and the Associate Director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the university. Shternshis is the author of Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (Indiana University Press) and numerous articles. She is finishing a book tentatively entitled Jewish Daily Life under Stalin and Beyond: Living, Loving, and Working in the Soviet Union, 1930s-1950s. Her other book project focuses on evacuation and escape of Soviet Jewish civilians during World War II.