The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism / Edition 1

by Barbara Epstein

Overview

Drawing from engrossing survivors' accounts, many never before published, The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943 recounts a heroic yet little-known chapter in Holocaust history. In vivid and moving detail, Barbara Epstein chronicles the history of a Communist-led resistance movement inside the Minsk ghetto, which, through its links to its Belarussian counterpart outside the ghetto and with help from others, enabled thousands of ghetto Jews to flee to the surrounding forests where they joined partisan units fighting the Germans. Telling a story that stands in stark contrast to what transpired across much of Eastern Europe, where Jews found few reliable allies in the face of the Nazi threat, this book captures the texture of life inside and outside the Minsk ghetto, evoking the harsh conditions, the life-threatening situations, and the friendships that helped many escape almost certain death. Epstein also explores how and why this resistance movement, unlike better known movements at places like Warsaw, Vilna, and Kovno, was able to rely on collaboration with those outside ghetto walls. She finds that an internationalist ethos fostered by two decades of Soviet rule, in addition to other factors, made this extraordinary story possible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520242425
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	07/28/2008
Series:	The S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	376
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Barbara Epstein is Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the Seventies and Eighties (UC Press) among other books.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Jewish-Byelorussian Solidarity in World War II Minsk
2. Why Minsk Was Different
3. The Minsk Ghetto
4. The Ghetto Underground
5. Solidarity in Wartime Minsk
6. Going to the Partisans
7. The Soviet Betrayal of the Minsk Underground
8. Strategies of Resistance Elsewhere: The Kovno Ghetto

Conclusion

Guide to Names
Sources
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Very clear and lively. . . . Epstein's book constitutes an important contribution to the English scholarly literature on the topic."

—European Review of History/Revue Europeenne D'histoire

"Valuable [and] illuminating."—The Jerusalem Report

Editorial Reviews

"Provides new insights with regard to the alliance between Jews and Communism."

Studies in Contemporary Jewry - Kiril Feferman

Valuable [and] illuminating.

The Jerusalem Report

Very clear and lively. . . . Epstein’s book constitutes an important contribution to the English scholarly literature on the topic.

European Review Of History/Revue Europeenne D'histoire - Natalia Krasicka

"Very clear and lively. . . . Epstein's book constitutes an important contribution to the English scholarly literature on the topic."

--European Review of History/Revue Europeenne D'histoire

"Valuable [and] illuminating."--The Jerusalem Report

From the Publisher