Salon Jewish Studies Blog

Recovering Jewish daily Life in the Soviet Union before the Holocaust is an oral history project by Zvi Gitelman (Professor of Political Science, Preston Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan) and Anna Shternshis (Al and Malka Green Assistant Professor of Yiddish Language and Literatures at University of Toronto. It "was designed to uncover and preserve the unique cultural heritage of Soviet Jews on the eve of Holocaust and to collect unique and irretrievable source material" (source: sovietjewishculture.org). Altogehter more than 500 interviews with people from Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussa were recorded during 1999 and 2007. Ten transcribed oral histories (PDF) as well as a bibliography of selected books and films can be found online.