Boris Slutsky's "Notes about the War" as a Holocaust Text

• In Event: Between Witnessing and Imagination: Soviet Jewish Writing on the Holocaust during the War and in its Immediate Aftermath.

Abstract

This paper will examine Boris Slutsky's "Notes about the War" written in 1945-47 and published for the first time in its entirety in Russian in 2000. Composite in their structure and genre (diary, documentary, memoir, essay, epic, testimony), the "Notes" is a text to a large extent unique in the history of writings on World War II, and not only in Russian. Consisting of twelve chapters, dealing with the Soviet state of affairs at the front and the occupation of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Austria by the Soviets, the "Notes" dwells in particular on the Jewish fate during the war. While Slutsky's overall stated aim in the "Notes" is to be "truthful" and objective, in his observations of the Jewish destruction in Ukraine and beyond, he lets his Jewish "biases" slip up and thus allows for his voice as a Jewish writer in Russian to emerge. The paper will argue that Slutsky’s haunting portrayal of the shattered Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Soviet Union is historically invaluable, on par only with a few post-war Yiddish memoirs. Composed by the poet who would go on to author some of the most powerful verse on the Holocaust in any language, Slutsky's prose broadens the canon of writings on the Holocaust, produced immediately in the wake of destruction.

Author

• Marat Grinberg, Reed College