10 Unfortunately, the archives in Rostov and Moscow can only provide fragmentary material, inadequate for establishing the dimensions not only which share of the evacuees the Jews constituted (comparing the relative number of Jews and non-Jews in the local population), but also of the general evacuation program in the city. It seems likely that most records were destroyed or lost during the two occupations of Rostov-on-Don.
11 Scholarship on this topic is rapidly expanding. See, for example, Arkadi Zeltser, “How the Jewish Intelligentsia Created the Jewishness of the Jewish Hero,” in Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering, ed. Harriet Murav and Gennady Estraikh (Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2014), 104–129. Cf. David Shneer, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011).
12 Vladimir L. Piankevich, “The Family under Siege: Leningrad, 1941–1944,” The Russian Review 75 (2016): 107–137.
13 For example, Albert Kaganovich, “Jewish Refugees and Soviet Authorities during World War II,” Yad Vashem Studies 38, no. 2 (2010): 85–121. Cf. Vadim Dubson, “On the Problem of the Evacuation of Soviet Jews in 1941 (New Archival Sources),” Jews in Eastern Europe 3, no. 40 (1999): 37–56.
14 For example, Albert Kaganovich, “Evreiskie bezhentsy v Kazakhstane vo vremia Vtoroi Mirovoi voiny,” in Alexander Baron (ed.), Istoriia, pamiat′, liudi. Materialy V mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii (Almaty: Assotsiatsiia “Mitsva,” 2011), 13–31. Cf. Zeev Levin, “Antisemitism and the Jewish Refugees in Soviet Kirgizia, 1942,” Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe 1 (2003), 191–203.
15 The notable exception is Shternshis, “Between Life and Death,” 477–504.
16 On the Bolshevik policies in housing question before the war, see Steven E. Harris, Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin (Baltimore, MD: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press and the Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 45–47, 49–52, 55–70.
17 We can only speculate on why this movement of evacuees into the North Caucasus happened: for example, none of the Ginsburg respondents observed this movement (highly unlikely), or they did not deem it worth mentioning in their letters (more plausible).
18 On this issue, see Christina Winkler, “Rostov-on-Don 1942: A Little-Known Chapter of the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 30, no. 1 (2016): 105–130.
19 For a brief overview of the Soviet newspapers during the War, see S. V. Shpakovskaia, “Sovetskie gazety v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny,” Voprosy istorii 5 (2014): 64–74.
Part One
Historical Background
CHAPTER 1.1
The Ginsburg Family in the North Caucasus
The Ginsburg family came originally from Odessa, which was probably the most important trading center of the Russian Empire and a major harbor on the Black Sea. Home to more than 125,000 Jews in 1897, the city was a flourishing center of Jewish economic life from the second half of the nineteenth century.1 However, it was also a difficult place for many Jews to live in; most of them could only eke out a miserable existence in the city as small-time traders, shopkeepers, and workshop employers.2 They faced vigorous competition with one another—every third inhabitant of Odessa was Jewish—and with non-Jews.
The new generation of the Ginsburgs: the sisters Manya (Monya), Anna (Anya), Elizaveta (Liza), and their brother Efim, were born in Odessa between 1890 and 1897. It is likely that their parents (father Gedaliya and mother Hanna-Rachel) were frustrated by the tough competition and the need to provide for their growing family. It is also likely that they were scared into leaving Odessa, especially after the pogrom that broke out in the city in October 1905, which led to the murder of some 400 Jews—the bloodiest pogrom in the Russian Empire up to that point.3 As a result, Gedaliya and Hanna-Rachel took their four children and left Odessa, somewhere before 1912, probably soon after the pogrom.
The Ginsburgs chose to move to the city of Rostov-on-Don, situated only 800 km to the east of Odessa, where they managed to survive the turbulent years of World War I and the Russian Civil War. When they arrived in Rostov-on-Don, it already had a substantial Jewish population. The city, founded in 1749, had its own distinct history, including the history of its Jewish residents. It was a part of what we refer to today as the “North Caucasus,” all of which now belongs to the Russian Federation. The region first came under the sway of the Russian Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Russian penetration into these territories was met with occasional fierce armed resistance by the local inhabitants.4 Still, the Empire prevailed, and from the early 1860s onwards, the region was subdued.5
The settlement of Ashkenazi Jews in most of the North Caucasus region was generally prohibited, as the area was situated outside the Pale of Settlement.6 The only exceptions were the cities of Rostov-on-Don and Taganrog, which, until 1887, were part of the Ekaterinoslav guberniya (province), and thus part of the Pale. The first reference to a Jewish presence in the North Caucasus can be traced back to 1800, when ten Jewish meshchane (petty bourgeois) were registered as residents of the Rostov uezd (area).7 As the Russian penetration into the region brought peace and prospects for economic development, Jews began to flock to the North Caucasus. Their prospects were doubtless better in these territories than in the overcrowded Pale of Settlement. As of 1838, some 6,000 Jews were registered in the Ekaterinoslav province, constituting 0.59% of the total population. According to another source, 26,069 Jews were living in the province in 1864.8 In the same year, there were 289 Jews living in the city of Rostov-on-Don (3.1% of the total population). There were also Jews among the soldiers and kantonisty stationed in the Dimitri Rostovski fortress.9 Rostov-on-Don continued to attract Jews, and by 1866, their numbers had reached 2,500, almost 6% of the total population of the city.10 One of the most important Russian Jewish industrialists and bankers, Samuil Polyakov, was active in the area from the late 1860s onwards.11
Towards the end of Alexander II’s reign, the Tsarist government attempted to put an end to the semi-legal Jewish presence in the province. On May 22, 1880, the “Caucasian” parts of the guberniya were given to Oblast' voiska Donskogo (the Province of the Don Cossack Host), where Jews were explicitly banned from living and owning property. The new law was rigorously enforced, and all the Jews living in the region (which roughly includes the present-day Rostov district) with the exception of the two big cities, Rostov-on-Don and Taganrog, were expelled and sent back to the Pale of Settlement.12
The Tsarist government endeavoured to complete the expulsion of the Jews in 1887, when the area around Rostov-on-Don and Taganrog and the cities themselves were annexed by the Province of the Don Cossack Host. As a result, the residence and property ban was extended to include the Jews living in the two cities. Up to 10,000 Rostov Jews were due to be deported, but the decree was suspended after the Rostov City Council petitioned for its reversal on the grounds that it would be detrimental to the development of trade.13
The only population census conducted in the Russian Empire, in 1897, revealed the following statistical data regarding the presence of Jews (including Mountain Jews)14 in the North Caucasus: there were 15,978 Jews in the Province of the Don Cossack Host, 2,196 in the area of the Kuban Cossackdom, and 6,582 in the area of the Terek Cossackdom.15
According to the Russian population census of 1897, among all other nationalities registered in Rostov-on-Don, the Jews had the highest level of literacy for men (71.7%) and one of the highest for women (54.7%). Unlike in other parts of the Empire, in the city of Rostov-on-Don relatively many who professed Judaism declared that Yiddish was not their mother tongue. This was due to the presence of many Mountain Jews.16
The North Caucasian Jews led an intensive religious and social life. In 1864, the local authorities recorded the presence of eleven synagogues and twenty-four prayer houses in the