Entanglements of War: Social Networks during the Holocaust

Yad Vashem, 2022.

The Nazi persecution and murder of the Jews of Europe led to the atomization of the social relationships of the victims. Families were ripped apart. Entire communities were ghettoized and isolated from the outside world. The forced removal of the Jews from the midst of the non-Jewish population facilitated the crimes committed against them, significantly limited the assistance they could rely on, and restricted the number of witnesses to their persecution and murder. However, despite the devastation, disruption, and loss brought by the Holocaust, prewar patterns and lationships continued to shape decisions and actions by Jews and non-Jews both during and after the war. Even in extremis, they often relied on established networks of support that had been forged in very different circumstances. Jewish victims as well as bystanders and perpetrators relied on the already familiar cohort of relatives, neighbors, peers, and colleagues to support and assist them during this time. Just as these networks brought people with various backgrounds together, Entanglements of War compiles a broad range of interdisciplinary perspectives to reveal invaluable findings about the relationships, choices, and actions that shaped these complex connections, and their impact on Jewish lives during the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath

Chapters

Jewish Refugees, Local Jews, and Soviet Jewish Functionaries in Soviet-Annexed Western Belorussia, 1939–1941

Karpenkina Y., , in: Entanglements of War: Social Networks during the Holocaust.: Yad Vashem, 2022. P. 23–52.

Following the division of the territory of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939, the USSR gained more than 12 million former Polish citizens, among which some 10 percent were Jews.1 Further, the actual number of Jews in the newly annexed region increased with the arrival of refugees from the Generalgouvernement (part ...

Added: August 26, 2024

Keywords: Holocaust