Lev Ginzburg: Jewish Germanophile, Soviet Investigator of Nazi Crimes

• In Event: The Cultural Politics of Jewish-Russian Identity during the Late 1950s-1980s

Abstract

The translator and essayist Lev Ginzburg (1921-1980) cuts a vibrant and controversial figure in postwar Soviet and Jewish culture and in the history of Nazi crimes’ investigation. In the 1950-1970s he was a ranking Jewish-Russian translator of German poetry who gave the Soviet reader exemplary versions of von Eschenbach’s Parzival, German Baroque poetry, vagant poetry, Schiller’s Wallenstein’s Camp and Heine’s shorter lyrics. But more importantly, the official Soviet Jew Ginzburg enjoyed broad privileges as an investigator of and writer about Nazi crimes. The paper will recognize Ginzburg’s contribution while also highlighting the many contradictions of Jewish Sovietness—the very contradictions his life and legacy embody so fully.

Author

• Maxim D. Shrayer, Boston College