Opening of the Exhibition “Jews in the Great Patriotic War”

The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, with support from the SAFMAR Charitable Foundation, presents the exhibition Jews in the Great Patriotic War.

The exhibition Jews in the Great Patriotic War has opened in Moscow. Authentic documents, letters and photographs were supplied not only by archives but also by descendants of front-line soldiers. Most of the exhibits had been carefully preserved in families.

According to Sergei Ivanov, head of the Kremlin administration, exhibitions of this kind are especially important in the year marking the seventieth anniversary of Victory.

“Its uniqueness also lies in the fact that the contribution of the Jewish people to Victory is represented not only by official documents and materials from state archives — although those are also here and are quite interesting — but, most importantly in my view, by personal photographs, diaries and letters of participants in the Great Patriotic War, which their descendants have carefully preserved, thank God. Such exhibits are always perceived in a special way — acutely, deeply, emotionally. They make it possible to feel the atmosphere of those years and the experiences of eyewitnesses, and to understand more fully the enormous price we paid for this Victory.”

“Our people always remember and are grateful to the soldiers who saved our people. And today we again see terrible ideologies developing in the Middle East, perhaps dressed in different clothes, and once again Russia is at the forefront, fighting and making sacrifices for peace and for life. We are very grateful, and I think the whole world must understand that it is very easy to talk and discuss these things, while acting is unfortunately difficult. The lessons of the past are important today. God grant that these lessons be learned once and for all, and that people live in peace and friendship.”

“First of all, the Jews who took part in the war were Soviet citizens who fought for their homeland and their homes. They went like everyone else, serving both in the rear and at the front, and together they all brought closer the one victory shared by everyone. Jews may have had one additional reason: there was no other path and no other fate for them; the question of life and death quite literally ran along the front line. Therefore Jews, like representatives of other nationalities — but perhaps because there was no alternative at all — were among the genuine heroes and participants of the war. This exhibition tells the stories of some of them, people who are known to everyone and who made their contribution.”

At this exhibition the history of the war is revealed through individual human lives.

For example, these are Iosif Gurevich’s notebooks and front-line sketches. On scraps of paper he drew his fellow soldiers, relatives and friends. Gurevich did not part with his pencil even in captivity.

And these are the letters of Leonid and Raisa Rabinovich, husband and wife. They were sent simultaneously on the day the war ended: “My beloved, the long-awaited hour has come, Victory has arrived, the Victory for which we fought. Our strength, our courage and our righteous cause have prevailed. The cruel enemy who caused us so much suffering and grief has been cast down into the dust and lies at our feet.”

“We wanted to move away from certain traditional approaches and draw attention to things that are usually overlooked. A war is not won by individual heroes; it is won by an enormous army. Counting the prewar forces as well, 34.5 million people served during the war. Yet this people’s history of the war has not been written. We created a special section devoted to these workers of war — in this case, junior and senior officers from second lieutenant to lieutenant colonel. These are people from whom something has survived, mainly in family archives.”

Special attention is paid to women who fought during the Second World War. Several photographs present the life and fate of the legendary pilot Polina Gelman, the only Jewish woman to receive the title Hero of the Soviet Union. She was a navigator and later a pilot. The Nazis called her a “Night Witch.”

There is also the fate of Yelena Kagan. She was a military interpreter and writer and belonged to the group of Soviet servicemen who searched for Hitler’s body.

“When they found the charred remains, the group had no safe, so she carried Hitler’s teeth under her arm in a cheap jewelry box. She was terribly annoyed that it was 9 May, Victory Day, and those teeth prevented her from celebrating properly. It was a kind of irony of history — or, if you like, Nemesis, the ancient Greek goddess of vengeance. Hitler had tried to destroy all Jews, and what was the result? A charred corpse in the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery and a Jewish woman carrying his teeth under her arm and complaining that they were interfering with her celebration of the great Victory.”

The exhibition also presented the complete publication of Gelfand’s diaries.

Lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand’s diary contains information about daily life during the war, conditions and customs in the rear and at the front. Rare letters, photographs and personal belongings are also displayed. The Jewish Museum has managed to assemble only a small fragment of the painful memory of war, but even this small part conveys the immense suffering of those years.

Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center / SAFMAR Charitable Foundation

The SAFMAR Charitable Foundation supported the exhibition at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War.

The exhibition runs from 24 November 2015 through 17 January 2016. The project is being carried out with the support of businessman Mikhail Gutseriev, founder of the SAFMAR Charitable Foundation.

The exhibition presents not so much a story of a collective feat as the stories of individual people who brought victory over fascism closer.

They include pilot Polina Gelman, the only Jewish woman awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union; military interpreter and writer Yelena Kagan, who was part of the group searching for Hitler’s body; Red Army officer Alexander Pechersky, leader of the only successful uprising in the Sobibor extermination camp; writer Vasily Grossman, author of some of the first texts about the Holocaust; and others.

Thanks to close cooperation with the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), as well as with children and grandchildren of veterans, the exhibition has assembled a large amount of documentary material. Among the exhibits is the manuscript of Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, one of the most piercing novels about the Second World War, helping viewers understand the context in which the tragedy of the last century unfolded.

A special place in the exhibition is occupied by photographs taken by Jewish photographers, such as Emmanuil Yevzerikhin’s Children’s Round Dance in Stalingrad and one of the most famous photographs to become a symbol of Victory, Yevgeny Khaldei’s Raising the Victory Banner over the Reichstag, which is shown in several versions. The exhibition also includes famous Soviet wartime songs written by Jewish composers.

As part of the opening, the first complete publication of Gelfand’s Diaries, prepared by the Jewish Museum’s Research Center, was presented. The diary of Sergeant and later Lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand contains reliable information about everyday wartime life, conditions and customs in the rear and at the front, humiliation and deeply personal experiences.

Of particular interest are the author’s entries from his service in Germany in 1945–1946, with his impressions of German culture, daily life and customs. The book was presented by historian Oleg Budnitsky and Vitaly Gelfand, the diarist’s son.

Background

The SAFMAR Charitable Foundation is one of Russia’s largest non-profit charitable organizations. Its founder is RussNeft Oil Company, headed by Mikhail Gutseriev, a well-known Russian entrepreneur and philanthropist.

The SAFMAR Charitable Foundation was established to implement socially significant long-term projects in culture, art, education and spiritual enlightenment. Its programs meet standards of transparency, clear strategy and consistency of implementation.

In its work the Foundation relies on the best traditions of Russian charitable practice and supports a number of major charitable projects carried out jointly with many well-known educational, scientific, museum and public organizations in Russia.

The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center opened in 2012 in the Bakhmetevsky Garage, a monument of Constructivist architecture designed by Konstantin Melnikov and Vladimir Shukhov.

Almost a century after this masterpiece of the Russian avant-garde was created, it became the home of Russia’s most technologically advanced museum.

Responding to the needs of contemporary culture and society, the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center is a cultural and educational complex that, in addition to its permanent exhibition, includes a Research Center, Education Center, Avant-Garde Center, Children’s Center and Tolerance Center.

The permanent multimedia exhibition tells the history of Russia through the culture and everyday life of the Jewish people. The museum also hosts major international exhibition projects.