The Holocaust in the Jewish Colonies of Dnipropetrovsk Region based on the book "Holocaust by Bullets: Jewish Settlements of Dnipropetrovsk Region" by Daniela Rosenberg

Abstract

This short article is a reflection on a book by French researcher Daniele Rosenberg about the Holocaust in the Stalindorf Jewish National District. Based on eyewitness accounts collected by the Yahad-In Unum team, the researcher describes life in the Jewish colonies of the region during the 20s and 30s of the 20th centuries, as well as the implementation of the Holocaust policy during the years of Nazi occupation. For many witnesses, what they saw was a difficult experience that stayed with them for the rest of their lives. They talked about the robbery of the Jews, the persecution of them by the local authorities, the police, and the Germans. They described in detail how the Jews were gathered for execution, how they were taken to the scene of the crime, how it took place. Also, in the testimonies of many people there is information about ghettos and forced labor camps. After all, many witnesses recall the shooting that they personally saw or heard the sounds of gunfire and people screaming. These testimonies contain important information that made it possible to reconstruct the mass executions of Jews in the countryside.

The purpose of the article is to familiarize Ukrainian researchers with the main ideas of Daniela Rosenberg's monograph and introduce into scientific circulation the array of oral historical evidence collected by the French Yahad-In Unum team.

The methods and methodology used by the French researcher were used to write the article. These are oral history methods, principles of historicism and objectivity, the case method or the method of cases and situations. The latter method allowed us to analyze individual cases that belong to a certain class of phenomena. In D. Rosenberg’s study, such cases are manifestations of violence against Jews in individual Jewish colonies, and together these individual cases form the phenomenon of the Holocaust in the Jewish agrarian colonies of the Dnipropetrovsk region.

Daniela Rosenberg's work is an excellent example of writing the history of the Holocaust from below. When genocidal practices are viewed not through the prism of official documents, but through the memories of eyewitnesses and victims. This approach allows you to see the nuances that official documents will never show. For example, the peculiarities of interethnic relations in the region during the 1930s, or the details of the mass shootings of Jews and the reaction of local residents to this crime. On the other hand, this book is an important component for popularizing the work of the French team Yahad-In Unum. Such works are of great importance for understanding the work that French researchers do.

The book consists of five chapters and appendices. The first chapter reveals the methodology and techniques of conducting interviews by the Yahad-In Unum team. The researcher emphasizes the impartiality of the French team, as well as the clear structure of each interview. In fact, the structure of the interviews determined the structure of the book. The second chapter of the work is devoted to covering the lives of local Jews and non-Jews during the 1920s and 1930s. However, the main part of the work describes the politics of the Holocaust in the region through the eyes of non-Jewish witnesses. For many of them, what they saw was a difficult experience that stayed with them for the rest of their lives. They talked about the robbery of Jews, their abuse by local authorities, police, and Germans. They described in detail how Jews were gathered for execution, how they were taken to the scene of the crime, and how it took place. Also, in the testimonies of many people, information about ghettos and forced labor camps is found. Finally, many witnesses recall the shootings, which they personally saw or heard the sounds of gunfire and people screaming. These testimonies contain important information that allowed for the reconstruction of the mass shootings of Jews in the countryside.