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This article explores published Jewish responses to Kristallnacht as they appeared in the city of Harbin, which was controlled by Japan via the puppet entity “Manchukuo” during late 1938 and early 1939. The comments were carried mainly in the community’s weekly Evreiskaya Zhyzn’(Jewish Life) and, to a lesser extent, in Ha-Degel’(The Flag) published by the city’s Revisionist Zionists, both in Russian. The Japanese military in the Kwantung Army that ruled Manchukuo were presumably the main audience for the messages conveyed by the Harbin Jewish newspapers. Japanese perceptions of Jews reflected a growing anxiety about Soviet Russia, international communism, and their alleged links with Jews. In Harbin, these sentiments were energetically fueled by the anti-Bolshevik Russian community. More threatening, by mid-1938 the Nazi-Japanese alliance was burgeoning. This considerably raised the stakes for the Harbin Jews, who feared that the Japanese might adopt elements of Nazi antisemitic policies. Operating at a turbulent period in a volatile region, the Jewish newspapers had to self-censor their messages and carefully navigate their coverage of Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass). Even so, some themes could not be avoided, most specifically Jewish resentment over the event. But the main target of this outrage, Nazi Germany, could not be called out by name. Another major issue was addressing Nazi accusations against the Jews raised in connection with Kristallnacht, even though these were not officially articulated by the Japanese. Particularly risky for the Harbin Jews was the question of how to come to terms with the alleged Jewish propensity for terror.

In post-Soviet Russia, there is a persistent trend to repress, control, or even co-opt national history. By reshaping memory to suit a politically convenient narrative, Russia has fashioned a good future out of a \"bad past.\" While Putin's regime has acquired nearly complete control over interpretations of the past, The Future of the Soviet Past reveals that Russia's inability to fully rewrite its Soviet history plays an essential part in its current political agenda. Diverse contributors consider the many ways in which public narrative shapes Russian culture-from cinema, television, and music to museums, legislature, and education-as well as how patriotism reflected in these forms of culture implies a casual acceptance of the valorization of Stalin and his role in World War II. The Future of the Soviet Past provides effective and nuanced examples of how Russia has reimagined its Soviet history as well as how that past still influences Russia's policymaking.

Religion is one of many factors that can help to elucidate aspects of Jewish and non-Jewish behavior during the Holocaust. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Europe was already well advanced in a process of secularization; however, the process was uneven, with Eastern and Southern Europe remaining arguably more traditionally religious regions. Consequently, we must consider religion as a factor, both in motivating non-Jews to help Jews threatened existentially by the Nazis and, conversely, that non-Jews driven by different religious considerations might also act against Jews.

Is it justified for modern-day Russia to portray itself as a bulwark against antisemitism and Holocaust denial? This may ring true, to a certain extent, with respect to Holocaust denial given the fact that the country bore the brunt of the war against Nazi Germany, of which the Holocaust was an integral part. It may be harder to argue when it comes to antisemitism, specifically state-sponsored anti-Jewish discrimination and violence, which had a long history in Russia. This chapter examines contemporary trends in official Russian posturing about antisemitism and Holocaust denial. I situate these trends within the context of the

In the first year of the Soviet-German war, hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens were evacuated to the North Caucasus. Many of them were Jewish women, children and old men who arrived independently in the region. Their evacuation created serious frictions with the local authorities and population with the newcomers often being protected by the central Soviet government. The latter came to welcome the arrival of these refugees in the North Caucasus, despite its initial reluctance to promote the evacuation of those whose contribution to the country's war effort was not direct.

This article explores the policies of Nazi Germany towards the Karaites, a group of Jewish ancestry which emerged during the seventh to the ninth centuries CE, when its followers rejected the mainstream Jewish interpretation of Tanakh. Karaite communities flourished in Persia, Turkey, Egypt, Crimea, and Lithuania. From 1938 to 1944, the Nazi bureaucracy and scholarship examined the question of whether the Karaites were of Jewish origin, practiced Judaism and had to be treated as Jews. Because of its proximity to Judenpolitik and later to the Muslim factor, the subject got drawn into the world of Nazi grand policy and became the instrument of internecine power struggles between various agencies in Berlin. The Muslim factor in this context is construed as German cultivation of a special relationship with the Muslim world with an eye to political dividends in the Middle East and elsewhere. Nazi views of the Karaites’ racial origin and religion played a major role in their policy towards the group. However, as the tides of the war turned against the Germans, various Nazi agencies demonstrated growing flexibility either to re-tailor the Karaites’ racial credentials or to entirely gloss over them in the name of “national interests,” i.e. a euphemism used to disguise Nazi Germany's overtures to the Muslim world.

The Germans occupied most of the Crimean peninsula in November 1941 and the North Caucasus in August 1942, where they faced thousands of Jews who were doomed to be killed according to the logic of the 'Final Solution'. According to prevailing scholarship, in other Soviet areas occupied by the Wehrmacht the food factor — namely paucity of food available for the occupying German authorities in order to feed the Wehrmacht, arrange food supplies to the Reich, and provide for the local population — led the local German policy-makers to precipitate the annihilation of Jews as 'surplus mouths'. The article analyses whether this connection evolved in the Crimea and the North Caucasus.

After the outbreak of the Soviet‑German war, Soviet media institutions fulfilled their major prewar role as a propaganda tool. The portrayal of German anti‑Jewish policies fell largely within their functions if only because such reports could not be authenticated as long as the enemy remained in control of Soviet territories. Therefore, they were likely regarded by many Soviet people as merely one more Soviet propaganda spin. Among them was a Jewish family, the Ginsburgs, from the South Russian city of Rostov‑on‑Don. Soviet media can be credited in no small measure with disseminating awareness of the Germans’ real intentions towards the Jews that ultimately reverberated to the Ginsburgs and incited some of them to evacuate while others considered leaving. However, the critical information on the proximity of the German forces was frequently unavailable or distorted. The impact of the messages emanating from the Soviet media depended on whether they accorded with the mindset of their consumers, such as the Ginsburgs, and whether these consumers were able and willing to verify media content from other sources, mainly rumors coming from refugees. In cognizance of the family’s fear of Soviet censors and their desire not to upset each other overall, one can say that the penetration of Soviet media notions is noticeable in 1941.

This chapter reviews several books on the experiences Jews in occupied Soviet Union territories during World War 2. These include The Final Solution in Riga: Exploitation and Annihilation, 1941–1944, by Andrej Angrick and Peter Klein, The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization, edited by Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower, Murder without Hatred: Estonians and the Holocaust, by Anton Weiss-Wendt and The Minsk Ghetto 1941–1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism, by Barbara Epstein.