Post-Perestroika Warrior - Passport magazine

History
The holocaust memorial
in Berlin covers five
and a half acres
Surviving the Holocaust:
Post-Soviet Jews
text by Phil Baillie
Soviet Jews are arguably the most
long suffering race of the modern age.
Many Russian Jews fled the Russian Federation
in the 1890s as pogroms against
the race were already rife, but were
further sparked by the assassination of
Tsar Alexander II in St. Petersburg. Up
to 2.3 million Jews, deeply affected by
the events at the end of the 19th and
beginning of the 20th century fled the
country. During the Communist regime
from 1917, synagogues such as that on
Bolshaya Bronnaya Ulitsa were closed
and turned into Houses of Culture to
promote party activities and values; an
insult to worshipers and an abuse of
their space. Of course religious repression
was universal under the Bolsheviks,
however, the Nazi master plan of
the holocaust is an event that will be remembered
as a crime against humanity
that edged towards the total extinction
22 September 2009
of Jews, many of whom had previously
suffered heavily under Soviet rule. I had
the sobering experience to take a journey
through time and space, from Berlin
back to Moscow to find out how Soviet
Book burning in Opera Square, Berlin, May 10,
1933. Courtesy of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum/NARA
Jews have survived waves of repression
over the last century up to the present
day. The journey would take me through
memorials in Berlin, Auschwitz near Krakow,
to rebuilding Warsaw and a camp