First Films of the Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and the Genocide of the Jews, 1938–1946

2. “The Beasts Have Taken Aim at Us: ”SOVIET NEWSREELS SCREEN THE WAR AND THE HOLOCAUST

44 The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 unleashed a new stage of the Holocaust, for the Nazis’ persecution of Jews was no longer limited to humiliation, expulsion, concentration, starvation, and sporadic pogroms. As part of their ideologically conceived war against, as they saw it, intertwined forces of Jewry and communism, the Nazis immediately began systematically murdering the Jews of occupied Europe, beginning with Soviet Jews.1 Reports of these killings began to reach the Soviet authorities probably as early as 19 July 1941, and by August information about killings throughout Belorussia, as well as in the Ukrainian towns of Vinnitsa, Kamenets-Podolskii, Zhitomyr, and Berdychev, had made Stalin aware of the Nazi intention to annihilate all Soviet Jews.2 Many historical studies have investigated the skepticism with which Western politicians and the media received reports of the killings.3 Such investigations tend largely to neglect the Soviet context either through ignorance; the logistical problems, especially during the cold war, of considering this dimension alongside matters concerning the Allies; the assumption that the Soviets knew nothing; or political and cultural antipathy .4 Furthermore, except for research appearing recently, the studies that do discuss the Soviet media have unanimously asserted that no such depictions were ever produced.5 In contrast to their Western democratic allies, however, Stalin and the Soviet government seem to have immedi2  “The Beasts Have Taken Aim at Us” SOVIET NEWSREELS SCREEN THE WAR AND THE HOLOCAUST “THE BEASTS HAVE TAKEN AIM AT US”  45 ately believed their sources, who were often trusted NKVD agents, and they reacted quickly: in August 1941, the month when the reports first reached Stalin, the Soviet press began to publish references to Nazis killing Jews. The radio and cinema followed soon afterward, though more circumspectly, with excerpts from the 24 August 1941 “Meeting of Representatives of the Jewish People” being broadcast on the radio and appearing as the third item in a Soiuzkinozhurnal newsreel (no. 84, 30 August 1941). The latter constitutes the first filmic reference to the Nazis’ genocidal acts toward Jews. In the first excerpt, the famous actor and director of the Moscow Yiddish Theater (GOSET), Solomon Mikhoels, addressed Jews throughout the world. Mikhoels’s speech, as published in the press, referred to the Nazis’ intention to destroy the whole Jewish people.6 The newsreel, however, setting a pattern that would continue throughout the war, omitted this reference to the bigger picture of systematic murder ; what could appear in print could not appear in the more emotive and influential form of the newsreel. In the speech Mikhoels (fig. 2.1) also described a shift in Jewish identity from the historically received one of passive victims to that of fighter: We no longer have the strength and will to remain simply objects of violence, victims. We must no longer mournfully bear our wounds to the world. In the new, free Soviet country a totally different generation of people has grown up. . . . This generation does not know the meaning of fear. This generation cannot bear to feel itself a victim. Together with all citizens of our great country, our sons are engaged in battle.7 In his speech, Mikhoels described Soviet Jews as resisting and ascribed this to the influence of Soviet culture. But he also proclaimed a shift in Jewish identity more widely toward active resistance. This dual emphasis suggested that he was addressing his speech not only to the wider world of Jewry but also to Soviet Jews. Indeed, a tension between these two audiences characterized the wartime actions undertaken by Mikhoels and others, especially after the formation of the Jewish Antifascist Committee , in February 1942. In an early indication of this conflict, however, the newsreel release edited the speech to make it solely a call for international Jewry to stand in the front line against Nazism, thus avoiding the worrisome appeal to Soviet Jews to resist as Jews. 46  “THE BEASTS HAVE TAKEN AIM AT US” Without Mikhoels’s references to a plan for destroying the Jews and to Jewish resistance, the newsreel’s most explicit description of the Nazi program of genocide came in quotations from the more reliably Soviet source of Ilya Ehrenburg, whose speech, unlike that of Mikhoels, was addressed solely to the Jews of America: “Listen to the cries of Russian and Jewish women being tortured in Berdychev. You cannot stop your ears. You cannot close...