Jews in the Red Army

From Yad Vashem:

Jews in the Red Army, 1941–1945

About the Project

From 1941 to 1945 between 350,000 and 500,000 Jews served in various roles in the Red Army during the Soviet-German war of 1941-1945. During the first months of the war a large number of Jews, especially members of the intelligentsia and students, served in the Narodnoe opolchenie (National Guard or militia), the irregular military units whose task was to slow and, hopefully, halt the Wehrmacht assaults on major Soviet cities. The majority of those in the Narodnoe opolchenie, who were poorly trained and poorly armed, were killed in the first months of the war. In the Red Army itself the estimates of the number of Jews killed during the war range from 120,000 to 142,000.

The 100 accounts of Jews in the Red Army that are included in the present project highlight those who received formal recognition, primarily as Heroes of the Soviet Union, of their military achievements. However, there are also many biographies of those whose services did not receive such a high level of recognition. Among those included on our website are generals, officers, and privates; tank crew members, submariners, pilots, translators and doctors; men and women; very young people who had recently left their childhoods behind and middle-aged people. These people acted on different fronts: they defended Moscow, took part in the battle for Stalingrad, liberated Ukraine and Belorussia, fought against Axis troops in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, and participated in the capture of Berlin. The stories tell about their pre-war experience as members of the intelligentsia, professional military men, or factory workers and - for those who survived the war - about events of their post-war life. Such an approach allows us to better understand the effect the war had on Jewish Red Army personnel.

Their biographies, included in the project in alphabetical order, often contain quotations from wartime articles and letters, as well as post-war memoirs. These texts cast light on the Jewish identity of these people and their reaction to the Holocaust.

See https://www.yadvashem.org/research/research-projects/soldiers.html

Comments

Jewish Religious Life in Poland since 1750 - Conference 11 Jan 2021

ONE-DAY ONLINE CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH VOLUME 33 OF POLIN: STUDIES IN POLISH JEWRY Jewish Religious Life in Poland since 1750 Published by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization/Liverpool University Press Monday January 11th 2021 10am-3.30pm Organised by the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies and the Institute of Jewish Studies, UCL with JW3 London. Co-organised and supported by the Polish Cultural Institute, London This event honours the memory of Ada Rapoport-Albert, who edited the volume with Marcin Wodziński. Following tremendous advances in recent years in the study of religious belief, this volume adopts a fresh understanding of Jewish religious life in Poland. The contemporary reassessments, with their awareness of emerging techniques that have the potential to extract fresh insights from source materials both old and new, show how our understanding of what it means to be Jewish is continuing to expand. Conference convenors: Dr F...

JGSGB Anglo SIG – Aug 23rd 2020 2.30pm – with Pearl Foster – “Jews in Georgian Society - The Laras of London”

Our next meeting in the JGSGB Virtual Meeting Programme is an Anglo-Jewish Special Interest Group Meeting by Zoom. Date: August 23rd 2020 Time: 14:30 London Title: “Jews in Georgian Society - The Laras of London” Speaker: Pearl Foster Description: The extraordinary lives of the Laras of London during the Georgian period. Abraham collaborated with Pitt the Younger's government to reduce the National Debt. Esther's husband was a good friend and benefactor of Horatio Nelson. Benjamin was the perpetrator of a huge lottery swindle and his brother, Moses, accumulated a huge fortune. Charlotte Dacre and her father the Jew King were personalities of the day. Their life stories are absorbing and entertaining: drawn from letters, court proceedings and other contemporary sources. Jews in Georgian Society is rich in detail and full of remarkable insights into the commonplace and exceptional circumstances of this extended family. About Pearl Foster Pearl Foster was born in London and m...

JGSGB Specialist Talk – Sun May 8th 2022 2pm – “The Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls, Women and Children” by Dr Martin Walsh

Our next Sunday meeting in the JGSGB Virtual Meeting Programme is a specialist talk by Zoom. • Date: Sunday May 8th 2022 • Time: 14:00 London; 09:00 New York; 16:00 Jerusalem; 15:00 Switzerland • Title: “The Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls, Women and Children” • Speaker: Dr Martin Walsh • Description: Almost all Jewish women entered England through London’s East End, where a cross-section of the poorer and working-class Jewish community resided. It was a dangerous and overcrowded place with its warren of lanes and criminality; most noted for the Jack the Ripper murders of the late 1880s. Many of the promises of marriage and employment never materialised. Worse still, some of these women arrived in London only to end up on the next boat to South America as part of the white slave trade. Even in London there was a real risk of these women ending up in the clutches of brothel keepers when the promised employment fell through and family members were not there to p...

Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain Blog

Search This Blog