A volume of documents on the Nazi occupation of Soviet territory during World War II, published recently in the Soviet Union, has been edited in a way which fails to convey the scope of the Nazi torture and murder of Soviet Jews, it was reported here today.
The volume, “Criminal Ends–Criminal Means,” was published in 60,000 copies, under the authority of the War History Department of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, the Central Archives Division and the Committee of Soviet War Veterans.
The book contains 153 documents. Only in four is any reference made to Jewish victims of the Nazi invasion and occupation. One of the four is a German photostat copy without a translation.
One of the other three refers to “Jews and Bolsheviks” and another to a plan to exterminate five or six million Jews. A report on Babi Yar, the site of the slaughter near Kiev made famous by the poem by Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, includes a description of the shooting of Jews alongside similar descriptions of the shooting of gypsies and prisoners of war.
The overall view given in the selection, it was asserted here fails either by design or accident, to convey the impact of the calamity which the Nazis visited on Jews in the occupied areas.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
