Rakhil Kovnator and Mira Aizenshtadt (Zheleznova): (Forgotten) Soviet Jewish Women Who Documented Holocaust in the Soviet Union in the 1940s

• In Event: (Forgotten) Lives of Jewish Women in Stalin’s Soviet Union

Abstract

The paper focuses on works of journalists Rakhil Kovnator (1899 – 1977) and Miriam Aizenshtadt (Zheleznova) (1909 – 1950), who both survived the World War II in Central Asia, and both made significant discoveries and advanced the knowledge of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. Kovnator was one of the major contributors and leading editors of the Black Book of the Soviet Jewry, a project that documented experiences of hundreds of Holocaust survivors in the Soviet Union. Vassily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg were listed as editors of this project, but according to the recently discovered archival materials, it was Kovnator, who came up with the concept of the project, helped to mobilize contributors, edited and organized the materials. Her name, however, disappeared from the editors’ list. Mira Zheleznova was the first person who wrote about Jewish Red Army soldiers and officers who received the Hero of the Soviet Union award for their extraordinary actions in the Red Army. Soon after the submitted the list to be considered for publication, she was arrested for treason and shot, two years prior to the execution of Soviet Jewish writers that took place in 1952. The paper will analyze the works of these women who were ahead of their times in their scholarship and who addressed research questions in the 1940s that would become the forefront of the scholarship in 2020s.

Author

• Anna Shternshis, U of Toronto (Canada)