One of the best gauges of official Soviet policy towards the Jewish question since World War II has been the portrayal of the Holocaust and Jewish resistance in the Soviet mass media. The attitude of the authorities – from the highest to the lowest levels – towards a subject as sensitive as the Holocaust undergone by Soviet and European Jewry reflects and underlines their real, and perhaps hidden, intentions and feelings towards the Jews. The attitudes expressed in these official publications in turn affected the Jewish population in the Soviet Union.

Since the manner in which the Holocaust and Jewish heroism are reflected in belles lettres is discussed in the previous chapter, we shall concentrate here on an analysis of the press and of historical and political literature. As in the other chapters, we shall try to examine the differences between the various historical periods and to elucidate their causes.

From the outbreak of the war until Stalin's death

Attacks on the anti-Jewish actions of Nazi Germany ceased to be published in the Soviet Union after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939. Until that time, they had appeared with greater or lesser intensity depending on the fluctuations of Soviet foreign policy. Moreover, the methodical extermination of European Jewry in countries which came under German rule in 1939 and 1940 was not remarked upon in any official Soviet publication.