While many monographs have been written about the Holocaust and the Nazi concentration and death camps, the “Holocaust by bullets” in the Soviet Union is a less researched topic. This is “the first book in English devoted solely to the Holocaust” in this region (7). The North Caucus is located between the Black and Caspian Seas. The Nazi occupation of the region lasted only for five-six months, from summer 1942 to the beginning of 1943. During this period, the Nazis and their local collaborators exterminated most of the Jews who remained in the occupied territory.
The book contains nine essays that explore the history of the region and of Jews in the North Caucasus, the Holocaust in the region, and its commemoration. Georgi Derluguian's essay “The Caucasus: A Rock in the Grinding Wheels of World History” explores the history of the North Caucasus from ancient times to World War II. He shows that this comparatively small region had incredible ethno-linguistic diversity and played a disproportionately large role in Russian politics and culture in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century.
In his essay “Dwelling at the Foot of a Volcano? Jewish Perspectives on the Holocaust in North Caucasus,” Kiril Feferman explains why all the Jews did not leave the region and so some remained under Nazi occupation. Feferman writes that the North Caucasus was located outside of the Pale of Jewish Settlement in the Russian Empire, and only several categories of Ashkenazi Jews were allowed to live there before the revolution in February 1917. A group of indigenous Mountain Jews also lived in the region. Some Jews resettled there during Soviet times, but the Jewish population of the region remained comparatively small before World War II. With the outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, “the North Caucasus quickly turned into one of the major destinations for Jewish evacuation.” (52) Several hundred thousand people were evacuated to the region from Ukraine and Moldova. A significant percentage of these evacuees were Jews. Some of them escaped further East, but many decided to stay in the North Caucasus. Most of the refugees were either women with children or elderly people, and it was hard for them to relocate to a new place. Some refugees were misled by Soviet propaganda and contradictory information from the front. Many thought that the Nazis would not occupy the North Caucasus. Others did not believe in the intensity of Nazi antisemitism. Feferman writes, “The North Caucasus in 1941–42 turned out to be a trap for the Jewish refugees” who decided to stay in the region (67). Most of them were killed during the Nazi occupation.
Andrej Angrick provides an overview of the Nazi mass killing operations in the North Caucasus and describes the largest executions of Jews in the region, in his essay “Operation Blue, Einsatzgruppe D, and the Genocide in the Caucasus.” He shows how Einsatzgruppe D cooperated with the Wehrmacht “in the implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” and the role of local collaborators in the Holocaust (69).
Stephen Tyas investigates the local Nazi collaborators in his essay “The Kaukasier Kompanie (‘Caucasian Company’): Soviet Ethnic Minorities, Collaborators and Mass Killers.” He writes that most of them were “ordinary” local men of different ethnic backgrounds who claimed during their postwar trials that they were motivated by their “anti-Soviet and anticommunist attitudes” (114). However, as noted by Tyas, this is a very poor explanation for the murder of women and children, who had nothing in common with Soviet and Communist ideology. Tyas writes that during their trials, the perpetrators “felt an admission of anti-Semitism even more unacceptable than lying in their statements about their own guilt” (114).
In “Mass Execution in Krasnodar Krai: Cross-Checking Sources for the Holocaust in the North Caucasus,” Andrej Umansky analyzes the various sources on the killing of Jews in the Krasnodar region and comes to the conclusion that the number of victims provided by the State Extraordinary Commission for the Determination and Investigation of Nazi and Their Collaborators’ Atrocities in the USSR (ChGK) was inflated. Nevertheless, he claims that the ChGK information is credible in its description of the executions. According to Umansky's estimation, during the six months of Nazi occupation, “over 15,660 Jews were executed in almost fifty different cities and villages throughout Krasnodar krai” (119).
Crispin Brooks discusses the collaboration of Karachai people with the Nazis and their participation in the Holocaust in “In the Shadow of ‘Mass Treason’: The Holocaust in the Karachai Region.” He writes that, after liberation, the entire Karachai people were deported to Central Asia as Nazi collaborators in November 1943. However, Brooks shows that the level of collaboration among Karachais was not higher than among the Russian population that lived in the region. Only a small number of Karachais collaborated with the Nazis, while many Karachais volunteered for the Red Army, and some Karachais helped Jewish evacuees. Brooks believes that the collaborators were motivated by the material benefits they received from the Nazis rather than by antisemitism.
In their essay “Rescue and Jewish-Muslim Relations in the North Caucasus,” Sufian N. Zhemukhov and William Youmans analyze the survival of the Mountain Jews due to their disobedience of the Nazi order for so-called deportation, meaning execution, asserting themselves as not Jewish. The essay also discusses the rescue of Jewish children in the village of Beslenei in Cherkessia (Circassia) and the survival of Jews in the town of Mozdok. Zhemukhov and Youmans write that “the comparative lack of anti-Semitism in non-Russian areas and traditions of hospitality toward guests” had an important role in Jewish survival (217).
Irina Rebrova analyses the Jewish strategies of survival during the Nazi occupation in her essay “We Were Saved Because the Occupation Lasted only Six Months: (Self-)Reflection on Survival Strategies during the Holocaust in the North Caucasus.” She writes that some Jews lived under false identities, pretending that they were not Jewish, others moved from one place to another, where nobody knew about their Jewishness, and some Jews followed “Slavic religious and cultural traditions” (237), pretending that they were Christians. However, the main factor in Jewish survival was the shortness of the Nazi occupation that lasted in different parts of the region from a few weeks to six months. So, in some places the Nazis did not have time to identify and exterminate all the Jews.
In “The Holocaust on Soviet Territory – Forgotten Story? Individual and Official Memorialization of the Holocaust in Rostov-on-Don,” Christina Winkler analyzes Holocaust memorialization at the largest Holocaust site in Russia, Zmievskaia Balka in Rostov-on-Don. The Nazis executed 27,000 Jews in Zmievskaia Balka on August 11–12, 1942. However, the Soviet authorities did not allow mention of the nationality of the victims when they erected a monument there in 1975, and dedicated the monument to “peaceful Soviet citizens.” The sign under the monument was changed several times after the collapse of communism, because the local Gentile population claimed that not only Jews were killed there. Finally, a compromise solution was found for the plaque inscription, which mentions Jewish victims of the Holocaust as well as non-Jewish victims killed there.
All essays in this volume are based on new research using documentary materials in Russian, Israeli, German, and U.S. archives and the testimonies of Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses, and perpetrators. The microhistorical research of many Holocaust sites previously undescribed in the historical literature gives us a fuller picture of the “Holocaust by bullets” on occupied Soviet territory and explores the Nazi killing methods, the motivation of local collaborators, and their role in the extermination of Jews in the North Caucasus. These essays provide new information about Jewish strategies for survival and about memorialization of the Holocaust in the region. The book significantly contributes to our knowledge of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union.
