“‘For Laying Flowers — 15 Days’: How the USSR Systematically Erased the Memory of the Holocaust”

On January 27, the world remembers the victims of the Holocaust. For millions of people, this date is associated not only with the memory of the catastrophe but also with the question: why in the Soviet Union was it spoken of in whispers for decades — or not spoken of at all. Historian Vitaly Nakhmanovich in an interview with RBC-Ukraine explained in detail how exactly the Soviet system squeezed the Jewish tragedy out of the public space.

Memory under state supervision

According to the historian, Jews in the USSR were well aware of the Holocaust. Almost every family had those who were killed, missing, or executed. Residents of cities, towns, and villages where mass killings took place also knew. This knowledge existed — but outside of official recognition.

In the late 1940s, even before the end of the war, spontaneous memorial actions arose. People came to the sites of executions, brought flowers, and lit candles. However, soon a period of state anti-Semitism began, and any such actions became dangerous.

“Thaw” followed by another ban

In the early 1960s, during the Khrushchev “thaw,” the situation changed briefly. There were attempts to establish monuments and discuss forms of memorialization. The state even considered how to take these initiatives under control.

But after the end of the “thaw,” the pendulum swung back towards prohibitions. Memorial actions began to be dispersed, and their participants were persecuted. Visiting Babi Yar, Nakhmanovich recalls, was almost as risky as participating in unauthorized political gatherings.

In September 1966, a rally took place at Babi Yar, which became the first mass unofficial act of Holocaust remembrance in the USSR. Formally, it was called “unauthorized,” although the people who came there did not consider themselves protest participants. It was an attempt to simply remember the dead.

Permitted memory — without mentioning Jews

Paradoxically, in those same years, the authorities took steps that outwardly looked like a move towards memory. In 1965, a competition for a monument at Babi Yar was announced. In 1966, Anatoly Kuznetsov’s book “Babi Yar” was published.

However, there was a strict condition: it was possible to speak of “peaceful citizens” and “prisoners of war,” but it was not allowed to emphasize that it was specifically about the mass extermination of Jews.

Laying wreaths with the inscription “in memory of the murdered Jews” meant automatically being accused of “petty hooliganism.” The punishment — up to 15 days of arrest. According to the historian, only a few dared to take such steps, and most of them later left for Israel.

Why the victims had to be “Soviet”

Nakhmanovich emphasizes: at the state level, information about the Holocaust existed. The problem was not ignorance, but ideology. The Soviet authorities consistently built the image of a single “Soviet victim,” in which there should be no national differences.

This logic was formed long before the war. Already in the 1930s, repressions began on a national basis: first against Ukrainians, then Poles, Germans, Greeks. At the end of the war, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, and Ingush were deported.

Initially, the regime fought against “class enemies.” When they were destroyed, the system switched to entire peoples, declared carriers of “bourgeois nationalism.” In this context, Jews became the next target — despite the fact that they suffered colossal losses from the Nazi policy of extermination.

Incompatibility with the myth of the “Soviet people”

The communist authorities sought to create the image of a single “Soviet people” with a strict hierarchy. In this construction, there was an “older brother” and “younger brothers.” Jews did not fit into this scheme.

Their losses were disproportionately large. Their contribution to resistance and the number of heroes — too noticeable. All this destroyed the carefully constructed myth, in which national tragedy had no right to a separate name.

That is why the memory of the Holocaust in the USSR was not just silenced — it was deliberately edited, restricted, and punished for attempts to call things by their names. This experience is important today when memory again becomes an object of political pressure and struggle for interpretations. This is reminded by NAnews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency.