For many years, Soviet Jews, like all other citizens of the USSR, had no real possibility to emigrate in sizeable numbers, but this changed in the 1970s.
This panel investigates contributions of the writer, political thinker and Shoah witness Vasily Grossman (1905-1964). Born and raised in Berdichev, Grossman entered the Soviet literary scene in the late 1920s and, following the Nazi invasion, became one of the most famous Soviet frontline journalists. By the late 1950s Grossman’s comparative investigation of Stalinism and Nazim had put him on a collision course with the Soviet regime. Among Grossman’s greatest achievements are “The Hell of Treblinka” and the novels Life and Fate and Forever Flows.
