Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain Blog

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 o...