Nazi-Looted Jewish Archives in Moscow: A Guide to Jewish Historical and Cultural Collections in the Russian State Military Archive (review)

The end of the Cold War brought about a major turning point in the historiography of the Holocaust. Drawing on documents from newly-opened archives in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, scholars have expanded their research on many fronts. But while numerous studies over the last twenty years focus primarily on the German perpetrators and their collaborators, historians have realized the dangers of objectifying the victims (as the Nazis did) and increasingly have turned to Jewish history and culture in order to understand better the victims' responses. Therefore, "it is no longer acceptable for general histories of the Holocaust to overlook the fact that the victims were real people with emotions and varying responses to persecution," as Dan Stone asserts in his recent historiography. ¹ The holdings of the Russian State Military Archive (RGVA) described by David Fishman, Mark Kupovetsky (professors of Jewish studies), and Vladimir Kuzelenkov (director of the RGVA) attest to the diversity and richness of European Jewish culture before it was nearly destroyed by the Germans in World War II, and may aid researchers restore the proper balance between the perspectives of perpetrators and their victims.

The "Jewish Archives" contain documents originating from international Jewish organizations, Jewish organizations in individual countries, Jewish individuals, and Nazi institutions dealing with Jewish-related issues. According to the editors, the Nazi-looted files were designated to help the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) build a database of "Enemies of the Reich" and to furnish information for the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in its research on the "Jewish Question." Much of the material was discovered by the Red Army during its advance into Central Europe in 1945, and transferred to the newly-established Central State Archive of the Soviet Union (itself incorporated into the RGVA in 1999), where it joined Polish records previously taken in 1939. From 1946 into the 1960s the archive received additional masses of material, so that the arduous work of sorting, ordering, cataloguing, and determining country of origin has continued until today. Nevertheless, the RGVA repatriated collections to Eastern European countries and France as early as the 1950s and 1960s, and began repatriation to other Western European countries in 1992. It also published a first three-volume Russian-language guide in 1973.

Unfortunately, there are serious problems with the title Nazi-Looted Jewish Archives, and with the historical part of the foreword. The title is misleading because it does not reflect the fact that at least a portion of the documents at the RGVA, including the "Polish documents removed from western Ukraine and western Belorussia in 1939," the "1.5 million files of foreign provenance" received in 1946, and documents transferred from various other Soviet institutions, were not looted by the Nazis (pp. 2, 3). In fact, the editors mention neither responsible actors in the acquisition of these other records, nor exactly where they were acquired. It seems reasonable to conclude, however, that at least the "Polish documents from western Ukraine and western Belorussia" must have been "looted" from occupied Polish territory by Soviet authorities in the fall of 1939. Hence the title should have been "Nazi-Looted, Soviet-Looted, and other Jewish Archives." The editors also never explain how they arrived at the assumption that all the Nazi-looted documents were indeed designated for use by the RSHA and ERR.

The subsequent explanatory part of the foreword and the descriptions of the collections, on the other hand, are of much better quality. The information on each of the eighty-five collections in the guide names the source of the documents, whether organizational or individual, in the original language and in Russian and English; gives archival designation, dates...