Abstract: The Eastern Front was the forefront for information gathering on the Holocaust, due in large part to war crimes investigations carried out by the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission (Chrezvychainaia gosudarstvennaia komissiia, ChGK). In the decades since, Cold War politics, Soviet information policy, and their lasting influence have led scholars to treat these materials primarily as artifacts of a “totalitarian” state. This article reframes the ChGK’s documentation as the joint product of Jewish and Soviet information cultures. Attending to the layered authorship of these sources by Holocaust survivors and Stalinist stakeholders offers a deeper understanding of the legacy of ChGK investigations in a new era of war.
Paula Chan (Thu,) studied this question.