The phantom Holocaust

Despite the Soviet tendency of silencing the Holocaust, or at least its universalization and externalization in literature and in the arts, the Soviet film industry has produced a number of films dealing with the Holocaust, or at least mentioning it. In the representation of Nazi antisemitism and persecution of Jews, the Soviet cinema was even pioneering: the earliest images of Nazi anti-Jewish policies appeared in Soviet films of the 1930s, e.g. "Professor Mamlock" and "Peat Bog Soldiers", all of which were banned in 1939, following the Soviet-German pact. Some of the wartime and postwar films, e.g. "Ordinary Fascism" by Milkhail Romm (1965), "Sons of the Fatherland" by Latif Faiziev (1968), and "And the Dawns Are Quiet Here" by Stanislav Rostotskii (1972), became Soviet classics. Some others were taken off screens soon after the premieres, among them the first film showing the Holocaust, "The Unvanquished" by Mark Donskoi (1945), and "Eastern Corridor" by Valentin Vinogradov (1966). Some films were banned immediately after their being produced ("Commissar" by Askoldov, 1967), or their production was stopped after their scripts were perused by the censorship. The artistic careers of many film directors, such as Askoldov and Vinogradov, were ruined. Therefore, the Soviet Holocaust cinema was essentially a phantom cinema. Only during the perestroika, in 1989-91, was "Commissar" shown to the public and Boris Yermolayev's "Our Father", the script of which had been banned in 1966, was filmed. At this time, the first widely circulating films dealing specifically with the Holocaust were screened. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)