Pioneers and Partisans: An Oral History of Nazi Genocide in Belorussia by Anika Walke (review)

At first glance at the cover of Pioneers and Partisans, one is certainly intrigued. Anika Walke chose an image of the Yama Memorial (2000; yama means "pit"), situated on the site of the former Minsk ghetto, as an illustration of her work. In the picture, twenty-seven men, women, and children are descending the steps to meet their death in the pit. The memorial was created by the Belarusian architect of Jewish origin, Leonid Levin, and Israeli sculptor Elsa Pollak. It is doubly symbolic: On the one hand, the image of a pit may be read as symbol of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, where most victims perished not far from their own homes and often under the eyes of their neighbors; on the other hand, the Yama, as a site of memory, has a long history of suffering. For several generations of Belarusian Jews, whose memories were denied a place in the Soviet narrative of the war, the Yama has been a place for informal gatherings and commemorations.

Anika Walke's study, which includes a vast chapter on Jewish youth in the Minsk ghetto, is an important contribution to the history of one of the largest ghettos in Eastern Europe. The survival of Jewish youth in hiding and in partisan camps (including Jewish partisan units), is another important topic the book covers. Nevertheless, Walke does not confine herself to the oral history of the Nazi genocide in Belarus, as one might conclude from the title. Making the genocide memories central to her work, she traces the life trajectories of nine particular individuals. Born in Belarus after the October revolution, Walke's respondents were brought up and socialized in a prewar atmosphere of secularization and internationalism and faced very little (if any) anti-Semitism. The German occupation of the Soviet Union and the implementation of genocidal policies irreversibly reconfigured the lives of these people. They found themselves separated from the rest of society and persecuted as a group. Walke's respondents experienced the inhuman conditions of ghetto life and extreme labor; they lost their families in the Holocaust and were left to struggle for survival on their own. Even though they shared some of their experiences with many other young Soviet people, survival was a twofold challenge for them. After escaping death in the ghetto, they continued to experience anti-Semitic attitudes from both the partisan leadership and the local population, and were often rejected as Jews when they sought help. In the postwar decades, these people struggled to build their lives in Soviet society, with its hidden anti-Semitism at every level.

Through such analysis, Walke not only shows the complexity of the Jewish experience in the Soviet Union, but also demonstrates how it shaped the current memories of the survivors. In the concluding chapters, we encounter elderly people who reflect on their lives, expressing nostalgia about the international friendships of their youth as well as the atmosphere of mutual help in the first postwar decade. Notwithstanding their own suffering, they repeatedly point out that many others suffered as well, demonstrating a strong sense of collectivity and belonging to Soviet society. At the same time, we can easily recognize their unfulfilled hopes for living better lives in the Soviet Union along with their regrets about losing their families; we can also recognize their attempts to reconnect with Jewish culture through their practice of domestic Jewish traditions.

For one who is a native of Belarus, the title of the book may seem a bit confusing. The name Belorussia is no longer used in the national historiography, as it has an explicit reference to the Soviet past of the country. Nonetheless, Walke chose this name deliberately. In doing so, she falls in line with her respondents, for whom Soviet Belorussia was the country of their youth and who do not feel any emotional bond to today's Belarus. Further, the name Belorussia helps outline...