welcome to the documentary from the bbc world service where we report the world however difficult the issue however hard to reach podcast the bbc world service i supported by advertising the com is the poor was that seeks out stories and voices from across africa that otherwise might go unheard of course each week we focus on a single story matters the co financing at the end of this podcast cost you listening bbc world service i'm catherine do i story and soviet russia and this is the story of the black book i cannot write i begin to describe the things i experience if you would understand it is the first destiny it's about the holocaust and the soviet union maybe it is even more important story it is emily

it is memorial project imagine if the earth could speak imagine if the doomed could leave a memoir for all time they did they killed eight year old hannah land for being too old and many a female bergs month old baby for being too young we think we know about the holocaust we pick two aspects in the camps but the mass murders began in the old u s s are in ukraine belarus and the baltic states the black book told the story often from first hand report but stolen had it all suppressed then we were heard along the edge of the ditch there was no longer any real edge since the trench was filled with people for a half amateur they really are among the first documentation of what was happening in the eastern front of the holocaust the holocaust by

as soon as the columns arrived everyone was ordered to undress boots had to be put in one pile the losses in another the black is really extraordinary anthology solitary organise while the catastrophe was still unfolding the murders remote out here deaf came where people lived was more it was precisely here that the nazis developed a working method for genocide historian john pull him the germans start a campaign of mass liquidations right more and more systematized again a lot of experience and how to do this they leave them and buried for a while that turns out to be a real error then scully well maybe make the juice dig pets make peel ws dig bits and they go to reveal it's virtually they work out an entire system so

happens is you have a massive mass murder with that horror does is it induces fear in fear induces compliance you know even when the germans were found war pursuing the holocaust with an obsessive kind of focus everything seems like a dream a nightmare the eight thousand residents of ios level the iron key fulfillment neighbour a left i will come my dear mother father my precious brother the letters in like a flood soon a team of right has begun to prepare them for print the chief editor international celebrity equalled in ehrenberg in this book i have gathered comments on the murder of helpless dues by the german invaders this is not literature rather stories letters to loved ones real and innocent diaries in the

of nineteen forty one a young german wearing glasses with sculling crossbones on his sleeves and color came onto the street after if you search he seized six men they locked them into the shed that evening they took him to the river where they force him to call on all fours in the icy water thus the old men were tortured for three days on the fourth day they were shot i want this book to burn like fire he was working with material it was both graphic and intensely personal but he hadn't reckoned with his boss even a stolen had the black books he was already preparing a fresh attack on his own jewish citizens and the book remains explosive stuff in a country where we'll history is at the service of the kremlin this story is political love

it but i'd be curious given that inception yeah when your kids have you that's the voice of europe that's him most most trusted radar announcing this tone was justified the night before twenty second of june nineteen forty one and without trial a formal declaration hitters troops had attacked the soviet union one had been prepared for them was a lovely summers night in key minsk and rigour for millions the reality took he's too sinking thousands died for they grasped it black smoke was off first sign above his head then came the marching lines of men the dust the heavy tanks from one day to the next million of lives changed wherever but not all lives were quite the same

dear comrade i received your letter of hurrying to reply with gratitude for your attentive federation towards when travelling on july fifth nineteen forty one the enemy occupied the status of you didn't see in hot in county their people were caught unawares having neither the time nor the opportunity to get away with the beginning of the war is are not like all other soviet citizens there immediately targeted for extermination in ways that are radically different other soviet citizens people to undress twa underwear and they said for money and documents then we were heard along the edge of the damage but there was no longer any real edge since the trench was filled with people for a half kilometer many were still alive and begging for another bullet to finish them off walked over the corpses and at sea to me that i recognise my mother in one gray haired woman they see

soon as their nazis come to their town wherever they be living in ukraine and belarus in lithuania they divide the jews from the general population and this myth that they had been brought up on over the last thirty years but it doesn't make a differ what religion you are all peoples are part of the soviet multinational group of people is immediately shown to be faster than their jewishness becomes the difference between life and death in many cases professor jeff reviling of the university of michigan the shock of this invasion was like none these lines had no it wasn't just the speed and shattering military effectiveness of it what made things worse was the way that peacetime soviet propaganda had numbed people's capacity

to comprehend a single minded genocide the soviet state had preached a bland triumphant internationalism now horrified people took up their pens to write to eat it aaron book ehrenberg very quickly became the leading voice in the soviet press against the germans his articles were read to soviet troops mullahs said that ehrenberg was worth a division hitler's said the hangar bergen red square if he were to capture moscow professor joshua rubinstein his errand books biographer eric was so valuable to the regime them the gray georgia is articles were written while he was in moscow he was very rarely allowed anywhere near the front because they didn't want to risk his being hurt or killed but amber about two thousand articles in the soviet press during the war is completely unprecedented and we now

that stalin was his first reader no author to soviet readers to hate that german invaders as effectively as ehrenberg date from the summit of nineteen forty one this task was it actually important in the wake of the cynical non aggression pact that stalin had struck with nazi ism in nineteen thirty nine the pact that led to the dismemberment of poland as the two dictatorships shared it out now the people who had spent two years learning to trust the german working class have to get used to killing them beyond that however they needed an errand book to give expression to the pain they also needed to believe he knew what they were witnessing dear comrade ehrenberg i did a label was born in the village of polygamy it she's on the serious river and the chin itchy region and nineteen what is to the germans killed my parents i'm the only one left of our large family terrified civilians were not the only ones who wrote

red army soldiers jews as well as countless russians and ukrainians also sent word to ehrenberg measure buddy mere limit of i found it let her in the village of beaten in the baron of its district it was written by a toy your old unita vision yachts guy the germans murdered approximately eighteen hundred jews from beaten day father i'm saying goodbye t before i die we long so much to live but all is lost they won't let us i'm so afraid of this death because they small children into the mass graves farewell forever i kiss you kiss you use j that letter almost stops my heart but this is not only the story of individuals there's something stock

worrying about the numbers to the thousands and thousands of lives cut short the numbers are so high because this was the land of the old jewish pale the land of the shtetl jews had lived on the border of the old russian empire for centuries place thereby law and the catherine the great and then obliged to build a culture side by side with their christian neighbors in nineteen twenty six there were two point six million jews in what was then the soviet union and that was before stalin's land grab in the baltic and the eastern polish lands these people were doctors dentists noise and teachers they were writers musicians photographers and the people who mended the wheels of cards or fixed old clocks and farming tools some spoke yiddish all the time others prefer to assimilate into the russian speaking culture of the metropolis but whatever they chose that

jewishness was a complicated matter a legal reality that didn't translate comfortably into stalinist social terms on definition of a nation included any people who had a territory and the language and in ways the jews didn't have either so stalin elevated yiddish as the language of the jews hebrew on the other hand he thought was a clever language of old religion and a zionist language as i rejected the use of hebrew but yet it was really elevated is the people's language and they established yiddish language schools they even established british courts yiddish newspaper yiddish publishing press all sponsored by this with so being jewish and soviet in nineteen thirty nine is a cultural national identity more than anything else the soviet government believes that all peoples should ascribe to the same fundamental

ten minutes of communism this yiddish wasn't just die act for the jews the backwards for the first time in modern russia soviet jews of the nineteen thirties relatively accepted and even relatively secure justice there were jewish scientists and politicians so there were yet speaking artists including a soviet superstar the actor solomon me well the slope to go the fearful lindsay article by year or so louis where none of that thread it seems twenty and nineteen thirties as he became first the star of the yiddish theater and then the director of the yiddish theater it became obvious that he had a

genuine ability to balance soviet demands with yiddish kite and he was able to take the place of showed him a lesson for instance of mental amorphous worrying and spin them in such a way that they were acceptable the soviet government get out because was a superstar but his influence reached far beyond the theater and it was in that role that he initiated a public rally held in august nineteen forty one and broadcast internationally to draw attention to the plight of millions of soviet jews at that stage to he knew tat he could count on vital top level support joshua rubinstein stolen understood that it needed to repair relations with the western allies the western democracies in order to withstand the german onslaught so ready in the summer of nineteen forty one he permitted a group of jewish cultural figures led by

solomon me julia ehrenberg to make an appeal to stern jews to join the battle against nazi germany it's rugged never said it's going to sell you data yeah i thought i'd probably strengthening overall every speech was memorable though it was still closed control on the rally was a watershed but nothing struck home to listen more deeply than the confession of area ehrenberg the man festival for his war i grew up in a russian city my mother tongue is russian i am a russian writer like all russians i am defending my homeland but the hitler rights reminded me of something else my his name was hannah i am a jew i say this with pride we hate le more than anyone else appealing now to america

jews as a russian writer and a jew there is no ocean behind which cover on a more nuclear over the winter of night in forty one nineteen forty two stolen created five anti fascist committees the jew anti fascist committee and commit four slobs for young people for women and for scientists and each of these middys had a similar role they were to appeal to that constituents see in the west to support this disappointed alliance what stalin was doing here was using jews as ammunition in the war but that was problematic in itself an easier times he would never have drawn attention to one group and its unique peril perhaps especially if that group happened to be soviet jews his

began to much preferred to emphasise the brotherhood of all citizens a bland soviet identity where difference was benign how can you use that tragedy i'm gonna think uses the right word to support the soviet forever professor timothy snyder of yale university the way you do is you try to channel that suffering into a group of loyal and articulate people who will explain in a useful way and that is the jewish anti fascist committee and you use these people to articulate what has happened in a way which will to put it very bluntly in buyer american jews to support the soviet war effort they said literally thousands of articles and poems and interviews about the war effort and they often focused on jewish suffering they were the literary commission of the jewish anti fascist committee they worked under the eye of the infamous solve in full

euro but they had a good deal of freedom when it came to assembling evidence and testimony professor pollys of a difficult of the university of debt there's this moment where they meet together a nineteen forty three the jewish anti fascist committee s really profound one of the writers says to the rest of the group we do writers must be there when cities were liberated we must walk in the fresh and bloody footsteps that our blathers walked we must meet the survivors perhaps remnants of the local jewish population have survived we must come to those who have suffered and listened to their stories and hear about the murderous actions of the remains and write them down we must come to those who have been liberated by the red army and offer them substantive help and warmth we must carry the burden with them together there was such a profound urgency to what they were wing an emotional component but that's me summarizes it to carry the burden with them together the common

i received your letter of hurrying to reply with gratitude for your attentive consideration towards my family until july twenty eightth savage terror reigned in the shtetl during which eight dr people were shot a numerous young girls practically children were raped and this is without even mentioning the cruel beatings and the plundering of july twenty eighth the entire jewish population was driven out of the status of tens of thousands of people were driven out like cattle struck with whips and rifle buts and very often hit by bullets they drove them without any rest cruelly not giving them anything to drink or allowing them to stop to help a dying mother or child they drove them over hundreds of kilometres from better rubbia to ukraine back to better able than back to ukraine convoy after convoy walked along and left behind dying children the elderly the sick and those who had simply lost the will to live the problem the compilers

based was making any sense of this especially now everyone was talking of a book as its editor in chief ehrenberg was even challenged to affirm it would be good his reply was memorable i'm not sure what is meant by good since the authors on what we but the germans as he explained the book was not a novel with applause that wasn't none all the same the added still had to sort out basic working principles you receive a letter from story but you preserve what the author wanted to say bye meeting longer passages that is what i did with the documents your conch and the method of selection should be guided as follows if document is interesting keep it and if in itself it is not interesting leave it aside we have our possession astonishing documents of human experience from very small locations they are capable of moving even a stone they are left

and stories of individuals letter of the red army soldiers goldman clause polio magdalene hoff o blast to tell you of another tragedy that of cross napoleon one thousand eight hundred jews perish there my family was among them my beautiful daughter my six some on my wife of all the jews cross napoleon only wants of ivy league the sky it was she who wrote to me about it i am a husband without a wife and a father without children i am no longer young this is my third year in the fight i am a soldier of the red army swear that i will take revenge as long as my hand can hold a weapon

at the i i i the the victory stoning was a turning point now it was the way correspondence who were writing back with eyewitness accounts of their own accounts reclaimed soviet territory many of which now across the globe were intimately connected to the victims they wrote about sometimes with blood ties sometimes being

it is of the cities that they wrote about and they were also in a sense felt opposition did as riders the document the atrocities that took place in these towns where their family members their friends you know their roots lay ehrenberg himself had lost a son in law close to the front and other members of his family had perished in the massacre at babi are you crying without jews but when the soviet army reached ukraine it was a war correspondent vasili grossman who is that right what he saw in ukraine there are no use no we're not in october harkov commend shook bodies portal not in ya got in you will not see the black tier filled eyes of a little girl you will not hear the sorrowful drawling voice of an old woman you're not the swarthy face of a hungry child in a single city

or a single one of hundreds of thousands of titles stillness silence a people has been met murdered elderly artisans well known masters of trades tailors hath may cause shoemakers tin smith's jewellers house painters furious bookbindings murdered a teacher dressmakers murdered a grandmothers who could men stockings and big delicious bread who could chickens and make true with walnuts and apples and murder grandmothers who didn't know how to do anything except love their children and grandchildren murdered her crying newborns who greedily sucking at their mothers breasts till their final moments or are murdered

many hundreds of thousands of millions of people after this report from classmen ukraine is the first time that the american jews actually understand or begin to understand the scale of murder elizabeth gallus of the simon took north institute on that was when the young thing we'll happened as the war raged around them all a delegation of soviet jewish cultural leaders set off on a world too i'm catherine mary do this is the story black book i have gathered documents on the murder of helpless dues by the german invaders dear right eye earlier i back some facts not right if possible tell them to you in person be our lives near the jewish cemetery one of its walls is practically built in babylonia that

she had been prepared ahead of time they took the tools aside and kill them separately there weren't enough ditches so they blew up the earth with mines to make new ones berry choose alive i want this book to burn like fire be a reminder of revenge we left the project as the idea of a book about the holocaust by bullet taking shape a purely soviet collection assembled from the words of witnesses and survivors no one had expected that the right might grow into something international true that had been his and telegrams as alarm about the killings grew that being exchanges of information but then some exciting news with stalin's blessing and the active support the soviet foreign ministry a small the from the jewish anti fascist committee was to be allowed to travel abroad the amount consider asked for ehrenberg but he was too valuable to risk instead

the delegation was headed by the irrepressible solomon me and included a pie when an yiddish poet it sick pfeffer seemingly rare for soviet citizens to be sent on a tour like this of america particularly in the summer of nineteen forty three while the war is raging jeffrey biting of the unit city of michigan there is a great deal of debate over who to select the sun on this expedition and they thought that the americans would be to suspicious of a member of the communist party so they sent me foiled but for that reason they couldn't fully trust him also because he was not a member of the party so that's why they sent pfeffer along the keep an eye on me it actually takes forty days through tehran to khartoum and then through nigerian they cross over from brazil and from brazil they work their way up through the port rico the dominican republic finally arriving in miami and then giving their first official address

in washington dc me coils gave great significance that forty day figure and making rapid to himself as a modern moses in that sense it's evening we bring you a message from the jewish delegation that have just arrived from the soviet union what the soviet government hoping they'll get out of it is the opening of a second front they want to raise awareness of atrocities the nazis are committing me coils came to see himself as safe the juice of europe greater rigour i was shocked when to get must have been astonishing for everyone involved these bits his were more or less the only soviets in living memory it taken a public platform in america somehow that we're miseries from this dark world nobody could really make sense of elizabeth jealous of simon took no institute that way

it with speeches in and get us and this seem to have a we very strongly fact on people and this feeling of reconnecting to the jews the soviet union that seemed last for a long time after the revolution that there was actually no connection anymore and these two a misery seem to bring back that connects and really show that there could be idea of united jury this feeling of having a mutual fight or even enter probably right coils gives a public address the polar rallies in new york in which he holds up a bar of silly and he says this is what the nazis are doing to the flesh of our brethren and he calls upon american jews do whatever they can to help the soviet union defeat nazism that room about the soap obviously becomes a real

conic moment in the history of the jewish anti fascist many and representations of the holocaust it turns out that it wasn't true the nazis were not making soap out of the flesh of human beings without rumour comes out of me how this trip there was moved because chip than making speeches obviously on boats the idea of using some of the testimonies to create a book was well advanced by nineteen forty three one of its most prominent advocates the american side was none other than albert einstein the world famous physicist had himself fled from nazism and was now

devoting a great deal of his energy to the struggle against it some sources sayd was albert einstein who had the idea to think about the preparation of a black book but we don't certainly know who came first what is sure is that wild in america they came up with this plan to do this the book itself was not enough for me coils at this point the fluid deadly politics of ideological world war had also reopened a question that was very close to jewish hearts recoils but a secondary goal and that is to let people know that he has at the end that he thinks the soviet government would have sympathy for the establishment of a jewish state in palestine he of course has no authorization to say this but it's on everybody's mind particularly the time vitamin president for the world

the organization at the time me hoyles breaks his leg is impossible and it's a point at which the people who are with him following him wherever he goes leave him alone for a little beth and this is the opportunity for him to have a secret meeting with high in vitamin a which allegedly he expresses his support for the establishment of a jewish state and says that leave the soviet union would not through any obstacles into the establishment of a jewish state in palestine as a result of the trip to the united states the foreign audiences widely defined solomon mihail else as the leader of the solid joy new york universe he's gonna be estralla and this was stimulate dangers in this the union there was only one with joseph stalin the

that was one looming shot in them but the other was about authorship up to this point soviet collection had largely being an errand books control now there were two books to be shaped a russian black boy and another in new york to be added it by the american committee of jewish writers artists and scientists new york would want some paperwork the documents were to be shared out sent a collection of witness reports to be translated into english and he wanted that as a separate volume brought to the american public apparently there was no american publisher found and this collection made its way through the black book committee they ok we're gonna publish some of these reports because they were very powerful in a book is furious that this was done without his permission ehrenberg he had

judge and sharing information but first no one told him and secondly here afraid it would under cut the possibility publishing the book in the soviet union if parts were to appear first the west primarily in the united states joshua rubinstein it would never in easy this collaborative work ehrenberg was difficult a writer has his pride the politics tricky too and he could see a lot but there was also a big difference between the the soviet side his side thought of the boat and the american approach the american version had quite a different scope it really tried to cover the entire geographical span of them patsy occupation and europe to give a full picture of what happened to the jews under nazi rule to bring to the public and to those responsible the entire crime was very important to them they actually looked at lots of death

and archives of jewish organizations the german press to document what was going on from nineteen thirty three onwards this wasn't what book had envisaged for testimonies and letters that had come primarily to him no wonder he distanced himself in fact he quit his post of editor of the sort black book other members of his team share his view of the work what they thought they were writing was a book of lamentation a monument to the dead not a compendium of facts the editorship of the soviet bloc book now passed her group that was led morally at least by vassili grossman as promised war correspondent and one of the best loved grossman had already written plenty from ukraine though the term itself been coined he'd been among the to see that this was genocide he was a war hero a survivor stalingrad but he had not managed if his own mother she was murdered

his home town of bad each other in the very first of the nazis came it fell to him to write of that at yad vashem results told me the story is anderson from documents is it feels meetings call for the church commission may in the spring of ninety forty four as they discussed the questions that there are no strong materials several places is decided to grossman bill right about deletion from might be one of the best tax is visible we'll person took him out to stand beside the rough mass grave then he made this account of it a careful record for the book and for his mouth so twelve thousand people were murdered that day the fifteenth of september nineteen forty one in a field to bed each other airport mostly they were women children and the elderly blood flowed without cease the pits were full of blood

the clay soil could absorb no more and blood overflowed stu form large puddles on the ground and ran into little streams and galleries those who fell forward wounded did not i from as his bullet but drowned in the blood filled pits the butcher the execution is was soaked in blood the vigour had to walk to their graves through dreams of blood this was already quite a challenge to the soviet myth of war but something else was even more painful the locals must have helped with this yale universities tim snyder calabria nation was master

among soviet citizens as it was among other people the germans were just as successful killing jews in the soviet union as they were in other places that had the other kinds of governments through this myth of the unity of the soviet people standing against a fascist aggressors ultimately was the journey two decided the nature of the collaboration throughout occupied europe wherever the nazis when they found collaborators the university in albert john paul hint has made a special study of the subject is ideological collaboration everywhere it stronger in western ukraine and in many other places its head say how much of the poor survival rate in that area western ukraine was due to the nationalist influence because something like ninety five percent of the jews in their region parish during the holocaust and yes the national definitely contributed to that other wise

the largest parts of ukraine iraq's commissar to krajina germans cocaine certain human resources so for instance if you look at play forces you can see this point the numbers of people either they were repressed or their family was repressed or they had family die in famine of nineteen thirty two thirty three there was fairly common annette was like low hanging fruit for the germans to recruit and its actions ukrainians or russians there were jews collaborating with the germans who were so anti soviet from what they had experienced that they would even prevent fellow jews from running to the soviet partisans do this to single them out but this was the atmosphere at the time and again this could rely on all sorts of things in a situation where people were virtually starving where food couldn't get in the idea getting a salary you know a cup

kilograms of flower of a leader or to avoid come all this made a huge difference for recruiting without ideological collaboration it was very easy for people to collaborate even former with officials rather than lose their status under the nazi occupation went into based the same rules they had before there is ideological there was resentment and there was this the simple opportunism that comes with dire circumstances so the black book caused problems all alone political and ideological as well as clashes of personalities but now the baron of usefulness altered early on stalin had needed the support of jews abroad which was why he had encouraged the soviet jewish fascist committee at home by the end of the war however the picture had completely changed its hard to

scribe it without making it sound to reasonable there's always an edge of horrible paranoia around what i'm about to say but the way it works this after the second world war the holocaust is unmasked rebel by soviet ideology because that the germans aren't challenging the soviet union as a force of progress only the trying to destroy some of its races as a german see it more than others are the main victims preeminent victim of the german invasion are not simple soviet citizens or workers which would be most can be yet for soviet ideology their juice that means that you cannot come drugs easily a story about how the soviet workers the soviet people resisted this challenge to progress because it wasn't just a challenge to progress it was a racial colonial enemy and it's all here we're still because so many hundreds thousands of people directly and millions of people indirectly collaborated in one of the things they collaborate with the germans in was precisely

in the jews and that's not something you can talk about in any kind of public way soviet citizens of one ethnicity collaborating with invader to kills citizens of another ethnicity to make things worse and shockingly jews who returned home from the war jewish citizens of relief and kiev and moscow in smolensk and said resentment even violence in a fresh wave of home anti semitism because of the legacy of the nazis and little nazis had spread extensive propaganda throughout the regions that they conquered many low rules in places like ukraine and belarus in lithuania had also profited from the extermination of the jews and from the expulsion of the jews from those areas during the war they felt ashamed of what they done of how they had collaborated and they also were concerned that the jews were going to reclaim their homes for instance that many it moved into so there is right

anti semitism among the general population as well argentina i'm stanton astray meanwhile mean i was the awkward new question of palestine and there is a russian committee for palestine was adopted by certain when gold the ear visited moscow on yom kippur the largest spontaneous gathering of people in soviet history took place thousands of people gathered outside the synagogue to cheer her on this was a shock to the soviet government they just hadn't anticipated how much the jewish community of the soviet union have been galvanised by the establishment of the state of israel the jews have become not only an inter enemy as the soviet government has long considered them but now

the enemy with a foreign state behind them and that makes them doubly dangerous in the same way that in the nineteen twenty the soviet government considered poles very dangerous or fear the koreans people living in the soviet union who had brethren who had independent states elsewhere and now with these thousands of the state of israel the jews in the soviet union fit this category and behind us too began to make statements indicating that he was supportive of the state of israel august nineteen forty seven the black was ready to go recoils himself was hoping for additions in both russian and you dish the editor billboard had nothing left to do but check the proofs and then the black book is on the press is in the soviet union when it withdrawn in the english version comes out it's just to harmful they can't allow it gives the impression that the nazis only time

the jews and then they remove it from the printing press isn't destroy most of the carpet had already been printed after all of this had been completed they're all of the editing had been done grossman worked you know four over a year just two it together bring all sources together and compile them and create the sections that was no longer useful to the soviet authorities these stories lost in and placed in archives would not be found for decades will it's an extremely delicate subject when stalin's political sensibilities in this respect i think we're quite accurate the black book had been published it than would have been clear with the improving moreover the soviet publishing house that the gene had suffered not only more but in a different way than other soviet peoples which is problem for a soviet state it's a problem for for any state which trying to explain a horrible tragic war which was almost lost

story that you want then is that all of your people's rallied in solidarity and threw off the tyrannical oppressor that's not a story which the holocaust helps you to tell me coils wasn't to give up as well it's november nineteen forty seven he was still turning a future yiddish addition that would give voice to all that was lost perhaps he thought his fame would keep him say it is no coincidence that she was mooted the first in general nineteen forty eight new york universe he's gonna be extra and murdered somehow secretly picky was despatched the minsk stance to his back local juice either theater was staged as a car accident but people could feel that the situation was really dangerous especially as there are signals there was a man and when the secret police came to the committee collected the entire archive removed it and for a couple of weeks

it was not clear what was going on then that they would even in order to prepare to self liquidation in november nineteen forty eight the committee was created virtually the entire remaining in infrastructure or she disliked in the soviet union vanished the committee was doomed in the name of the union of soviet socialist republics the mill weekly gym of the supreme court of the ussr verdict the jewish anti fascist committee was organized its direct it began under a program of nationalistic activity and established contact with jewish nationalistic organizations in america at the end of nineteen fifty two it took pfeffer and a group of key figures from the yiddish speaking community were tried in secret and all shocked actually the secret trial the black book manuscript was used as evidence against them there was evident

if the jewish wars white nationalism and that was a capital charge in those days in the soviet union in this book the jews are in a category separate and opposed to other people the contribution of the jews to world civilization is exaggerated attend is paid exclusively to the loss is borne by the jews during the war and the eyes it was presented that fascism supposedly represented a threat to jews alone and not all peoples into civilization that might have been the end of it a whole chapter of history the stories of almost half of the six million that the nazis murdered in their war might easily have disappeared as it was on curtain came down in europe after nineteen forty five closed off most western interest in sight jewish graves this on the soviet side was echoed in the west where it was difficult to in the story without witnesses archives or access to the murder sites for most of us the whole

post was a moral tail epitomised by outfits and it ended with operation by the eyes of now infamous death camps we didn't want to think about the murders in the east but ehrenberg had not allowed his papers to be seized our star cod is out of the holocaust memorial centre yad vashem to tell me more and book had a lot of documents that he was storing in his apartment what happened then to the document alien daughter offering both road at the beginning of ninety eight is she needs to transfer material to serve times a kgb begin to interest in his material sense she afraid of disease and that finally came on of diplomats these very white coat was pockets from the other side they brought it the sea and then he found their way to

bring it once the documents were safe sky combined them with material from wartime yiddish publications create a russian language volume jordan i can eager the black book it had taken half if time but the lamentation of soviet jury was in print but it was still not part how the world imagined the show the power of the soviet state had kept the story door for long periods territory the holocaust so dream was not enough researched there are several reasons one of them was their soft eyes were closed and was difficult to work is this topic of of the black book in the removal of this part of soviet history has all kinds of unpredictable consequences for us here in the west which is that its help us to misunderstand the holocaust twenty years

after the opening of the archives you have sixty years more after the ban on publication of the black book we still haven't really understood that the holocaust began in the soviet union that it began with shooting that almost half of its victims were soviet citizens and i mean it's one example among many of east european history falling behind the iron curtain but its ending input is crucial to a history we think we know the history of the holocaust was such that the soviets suppressed this for themselves in a way they suppress it for everyone the politics of tyranny is still at work today when we set out to make this programme we expected to begin to russia and i'd to go to ukraine and impulsively belarus putin started has made that impossible it's why i'm here in latvia and not by bobby yeah the forest of rumbling just outside riga where twenty a thousand jews were murdered in just two days at the end of nineteen forty one that bodies stacked in three large pits the woods a fairly

today you just got the main road and then you can use a railway line the trees lead birch with a few all kinds the ash mistake we welcome posted leaves and just up here along the slope there are two memorials the first is clearly soviet i've seen them everywhere it's a flat with a hammer and sickle and an inscription that doesn't mention the deaths of jews but the second is more eloquent as well as a good deal larger you could miss the slab but you can't miss this class of rough cut stones stretching out in all directions from the base of an unmistakably jewish manure assent branched candlestick that looks like a grey tree with routes in that rock you can walk around this is more democrat more humane and what is more honest

stand with me here for just one beat and think of all we ve lost the earth here knows it's full of bones it's important to listen to the witnesses and a record must be kept but it's the earth but speaks to me voices i can't hear who speaks for the people deep under these trees it was a major event is a major event in ukraine in history soviet history european history jewish history that two taos there used to be this whole group that lived there there used to be a jewish culture jewish community to society and jewish religion yet it was a language spoken throughout the red throughout the country the laws are destroyed

you ve been listening to the story of the black book on the bbc world service catherine mary do the readers and on lesser and members of the radio drama company the producer was marked berman the coombe is back bringing you more voices and more stories from across africa the cold cold it was a moment that was filled with hope it was emotional i stepped aside and i cried it was a very life changing experience each week we look into a single african story that matters to him read my mistake i can find closure in a lot of things from a ugandan refugee facing an uncertain future safety security what a planned to a cameroonian woman battling to bring back a sacred statue is about africa's heritage we are like children who don't know that that's the code from the civil service can just search for the code

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