Pariahs Among Pariahs

Of a total of 5,745,000 Soviet POWs captured by German forces during World War II, at least three million died in captivity. It does not require much imagination to comprehend the terrible fate of Soviet-Jewish soldiers who fell into the hands of German forces charged with exterminating “Judeo-Bolshevism.” Aron Shneyer’s synthesis of archival research and testimony from numerous former Soviet republics relates considerably more information than his title suggests. While the heart of the text concerns the fate of approximately 85,000 Soviet-Jewish military personnel taken into captivity, Shneyer also meticulously reconstructs the history of Jews in the Soviet military services beginning with the Russian Civil War (1918–1922). Moreover, for comparison’s sake, Shneyer addresses Jewish participation in other combatant nations’ militaries and their differing experiences in German captivity. The result is an impressive resource for historians unfamiliar with Soviet languages and archives, but who are interested in attaining a full picture of this sizeable subgroup of Holocaust victims. Shneyer’s intent is not to write a traditional monograph emphasizing analysis and marking a place in the historiography so much as it is a recovery operation. He relates the testimony and accounts of dozens of POWs, perpetrators, and bystanders in concise, unadorned language. The author’s interviews and correspondence with veterans is included in the last section of the book

Ancient history · Archaeology · Captivity · Combatant · German · Historiography · Judaism · Political science · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · The Holocaust · World War II · European history and politics · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy · Classics · History · Law