1. Including the Baltic states, western Ukraine, and western Belarus—regions that the Soviet Union annexed in 1939–1941 and retained after the war. See Arad, Yitzhak, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 525Google Scholar; Gitelman, Zvi, “Politics and the Historiography of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union,” in Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 14Google Scholar; Kupovetsky, Mark, “Estimation of Jewish Losses in the USSR during World War II,” Jews in Eastern Europe 2, no. 24 (Summer 1994): 25–37Google Scholar

2. A term coined by Father Patrick Desbois, who has been instrumental in bringing this lesser-known aspect of Holocaust history into public view.

3. Reluctance to disturb the dead is based on concerns that arousing the dead will cause the deceased fear of divine judgement (ḥaradat ha-din). See 1 Samuel 28:15. Rabbinic sources also express concern over the physical exposure of the deceased, lest it lead the living to ridicule the helpless (loʿeg le-rash). See Proverbs 17:5. The specific prohibition against humiliating the dead is known as nivul u-bizayon ha-met. See B. Bava Batra 154b. By the late twelfth century, rabbinic sources rejected the notion that the deceased can experience physical or emotional suffering. Nevertheless, the prohibition against disturbing or exposing the dead remained in effect. The desire to bury the dead alongside their ancestors is rooted in the Tanakh, where being gathered to one's “fathers” or “kin” is, at turns, a euphemism for death and, at turns, a literal site of proper burial. See Genesis 15:15, 25:8, 49:29, and 50:13, Numbers 20:24, Judges 2:10, 2 Kings 22:20, and Samuel 19:38. Later, in rabbinic sources, Y. Mo‘ed Katan, chapter one, asserts, “It is pleasant for a person to rest near his ancestors.”

Concern for the legal status and physical security of graves is also deeply rooted in rabbinic tradition. For centuries prior to the Holocaust, rabbis in the Diaspora had ruled that individual graves and even entire cemeteries could be exhumed and relocated if they damaged or impinged on public access and use of a property.

4. There were some exceptions. For an overview of exhumation and reburial activities by Jewish DPs in the American zone of occupation in postwar Germany, see Finder, Gabriel N., “Yizkor! Commemoration of the Dead by Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany,” in Between Mass Death and Individual Loss: The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany, ed. Confino, Alon, Betts, Paul, and Schumann, Dirk (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 233–57Google Scholar.

5. Most returnees were not Holocaust survivors in the strictest sense of the word, since very few Soviet Jews survived in hiding on Nazi-occupied territory. Instead, the vast majority had survived the war in evacuation or in the Red Army, returning to their hometowns only after liberation. Here, I use the term “survivor” primarily to describe the relationship of these returnees vis-à-vis their relatives and neighbors who had been murdered during the Holocaust.

6. Robert A. LeVine, “Gusii Funerals: Meanings of Life and Death in an African Community,” Ethos 10, no. 1 (1982): 26–65, 31.

7. Robert Jay Lifton, The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 17.

8. As Saul Esh argues, the overwhelming reaction of the Jewish masses to Nazi atrocities was the sanctification of life in the face of death—manifested in a stubborn commitment to Jewish life, as understood by each individual. Esh's argument can easily be extended into the postwar period. See Saul Esh, “The Dignity of the Destroyed: Towards a Definition of the Period of the Holocaust,” Judaism 2 (1962): 106–7.

9. See the entry on Tovste in Yad Vashem's Online Guide of Murder Sites of Jews in the Former USSR, http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/institute/killing_sites_catalog_details_full.asp?region=Tarnopol&title=Tarnopol%20region. An additional 1,000 Jews were shot at the cemetery on June 6, 1943. See Alexander Kruglov and Martin Dean, “Tłuste,” trans. Igor Puchkov, in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum [USHMM] Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, ed. Martin Dean and Mel Hecker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 2:841–43.

10. Milch, Baruch, Can Heaven Be Void, ed. Milch-Avigal, Shosh, trans. Kaye, Helen (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2003), 232Google Scholar.

11. The Soviet state recognized prerevolutionary Jewish cemeteries and permitted the creation of new Jewish cemeteries both before and after the Second World War. While cemeteries were managed and maintained by local city councils and departments of “communal property,” their denominational affiliations remained intact. See Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) f. 6991, op. 4, d. 19, l. 214–5 (Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People [CAHJP] RU 1755); Tsentralnii derzhavnii arkhiv gromadskikh obednan Ukraini (TsDAGOU) f. 4648, op. 2, d. 16, l. 64 (CAHJP RU 1883).

12. For more on the persistence of Jewish traditions and taboos surrounding visits to graves, see Valery Dymshitz, “Evreiskoe kladbische: mesto, kuda ne khodiat,” October 6, 2013, http://www.jewishpetersburg.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6114. The traditional prohibition of exhumation is based on Y. Moʿed Katan 2:4 (81b) and B. Semaḥot 13:5–7. The specific prohibition against exhumation is known as pinuy met ve-ʿaẓamot. See M. Ohalot 16:3; B. Yevamot 63b; B. Nazir 64b; B. Bava Batra 102a; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Tumʾat met, chap. 9; and the Shulḥan ‘arukh, yoreh de‘ah, 363:1.

13. Alexander Kruglov and Martin Dean, “Krasilov” and “Kul'chiny,” trans. Steven Seegel, in Dean and Hecker, USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 2:1392–94, 2:1398–99; “Manevtsy Forest,” The Untold Stories: The Murder Sites of the Jews in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR, Yad Vashem, http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/murderSite.asp?site_id=1000; “Manevtsy Forest,” Untold Stories, http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/murderSite.asp?site_id=225.

14. Testimony of Sima Slutski, USC Shoah Foundation VHA #30173; testimony of Leonid Goldenberg, Yad Vashem Archive (YVA) O.48/301.16, available at http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/commemorationWT.asp?cid=753.

15. Testimony of Leonid Goldenberg, YVA O.48/301.16.

16. For more on the integration of mass graves into the local Jewish burial landscape, see Arkadi Zeltser, Unwelcome Memory: Holocaust Monuments in the Soviet Union (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem: The International Institute for Holocaust Research, 2018), 218–27. For more on Soviet Jews’ postwar efforts to construct monuments at the sites of mass graves and conduct memorial ceremonies, see Zeltser, Unwelcome Memory; Leonid Smilovitsky, Jewish Life in Belarus: The Final Decade of the Stalin Regime (1944–53) (New York: Central European University Press, 2014), 165–78; and Mordechai Altshuler, Religion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union, 1941–1964 (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2012), 51–58, 219–23.

17. Zeltser, Unwelcome Memory, 51–53.

18. Iosif D. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3606), Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

19. Both Elissa Bemporad and Anna Shternshis have noted the complexity of Jewish Sovietization prior to the Second World War. In the public sphere, Jewish adults and children functioned in accordance with Soviet norms and rituals. However, in the privacy of the home, many chose to maintain certain Jewish practices (e.g., family gatherings on major Jewish holidays, eating matzah on Passover, etc.). See Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 132–33; Shternshis, Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 39–43. In addition to these holiday rituals, I believe we must also consider the frequency with which young Soviet Jews in the 1920s and 30s were exposed to traditional Jewish burial practices following the deaths of religious grandparents.

20. Margarita F. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3621), Fortunoff Video Archive.

21. Tzvi K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4182), Fortunoff Video Archive.

22. Shoshana B. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3865), Fortunoff Video Archive.

23. Grigorii D. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3600), Fortunoff Video Archive.

24. Ida B. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3598), Fortunoff Video Archive. See also “Commemoration of Jewish Victims,” Untold Stories, http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/commemoration.asp?cid=669.

25. For instance, the Shulḥan ʿarukh—the most authoritative and widely referenced code of Jewish law—permits reburial to reunite the deceased with their ancestors and to protect graves from desecration by non-Jews. It also permits reburial to transfer remains to the Land of Israel. See Shulḥan ʿarukh, yoreh deʿah, 364:3. For modern, pre-Holocaust examples of rabbis who condoned the exhumation of endangered individual and mass graves, see Polak, Joseph A., “Exhuming Their Neighbors,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 35, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 23–43, 34–36Google Scholar.

26. For example, Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, who survived the war in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania, personally oversaw the reburial of approximately 3,000 Holocaust victims. According to Oshry, reburial to a Jewish cemetery not only protected the victims from shame and disgrace, it would also preserve their memory and summon divine justice. See Finder, Gabriel N., “Final Chapter: Portraying the Exhumation and Reburial of Polish Jewish Holocaust Victims in the Pages of Yizkor Books,” in Human Remains and Identification: Mass Violence, Genocide, and the “Forensic Turn,” ed. Anstett, Élisabeth and Dreyfus, Jean-Marc (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 49Google Scholar.

27. Olga Litvak cautions scholars against interpreting Soviet Jews’ fragmentary ritual practices as evidence of continued religious observance. See Litvak, Olga, “The New Marranos,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 29 (2016): 245–67Google Scholar. Here, I set aside questions of “religion” and focus simply on the persistence of traditional rituals that, historically, emerged out of religious law and theology and continued in the Soviet context.

28. Testimony of Aleksandra Borisovna Shumina, USC Shoah Foundation VHA #49152.

29. Testimony of Lev Bondar’, survivor from Ozarintsy, USC Shoah Foundation VHA #33675. After Ozaryntsi's liberation in 1944, survivors erected a monument to the victims’ memory. See Yad Vashem photograph #6637.

30. Since most of the victims were refugees from Bessarabia, reuniting the victims with their ancestors’ graves in their hometowns was logistically impossible. Throughout the war, deportees and refugees were routinely executed far from their hometowns. Even after the war, when transporting bodies between cities was theoretically possible, Jewish communities tended to rebury remains in the locale where they had been murdered—treating their remains as mete miẓvah, who are entitled to burial in the place where they are found.

31. For a summary of the mass shootings conducted by the German occupiers in the Krugloe ghetto between September 1941 and June 1942, see Daniel Romanovsky and Martin Dean, “Krugloe,” in Dean and Hecker, USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 2:1691–92.

32. In Russian, natsional'nost. In the Soviet context, this was not an indication of citizenship, but of ethnic affiliation.

33. Aleksandr Litin and Ida Shenderovich, “Svideteli rasskazyvaiut,” http://shtetle.com/shtetls_mog/krugloe/krugloe.html. Later, survivors from the Krugloe region paid for Jewish victims from the nearby villages of Khot'kovo and Teterino to be reburied in the Krugloe Jewish cemetery as well. See the testimony of Evgenii Savel'evich El'man, USHMM RG-68.186, Danill Romanovsky Collection, folder 25 (Krugloe), 1–12. Subsequently, Teterino and Khot'kovo were added to the monument, between the lines of the original inscription. See the 2008 photograph by Aleksandr Litin, Untold Stories, https://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/photos/251/Krugloe_kldbische_2.jpg.

34. Testimony of Yakov Sagalin, YVA O.93/4668, available at http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/writtenTestimonies.asp?cid=271&site_id=267.

35. Between the villages of Maloe Zareche and Putniki. A conflicting survivor account by Boris Gal'perin (b. 1927) asserts that this mass shooting coincided with the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, which fell on October 1. See Aĭzenshtat, L. A. and Baburina, I. I., eds., Kniga zhivykh: Vospominaniiaevreev-frontovikov, uznikov getto i kontslagereĭ, boĭtsov partizanskikh otriadov, zhiteleĭ blokadnogo Leningrada (Sankt-Peterburg: Akropol’, 1995), 325Google Scholar.

36. Testimony of Ia., USHMM RG-68.186, Danill Romanovsky Collection, folder 11 (Shklov, Dubrovino, Liady), 144–47 (1–5). This interview and others from the same collection (USHMM RG-68.186) were collected in the 1980s and are particularly significant for the insight they provide into Soviet Jews’ memories of commemorative efforts prior to the influx of western Jewish organizations in the early 1990s.

37. Kniga zhivykh, 326.

38. Testimony of Aleksandra Borisovna Shumina, USC Shoah Foundation VHA #49152.

39. Testimony of Ia., USHMM RG-68.186, Danill Romanovsky Collection, folder 11 (Shklov, Dubrovino, Liady), 144–47 (1–5).

40. Testimony of Aleksandra Borisovna Shumina, USC Shoah Foundation VHA #49152.

41. Photographs by Aleksandr Litin, Untold Stories, http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/commemoration.asp?cid=271.

42. Exhumation of the Ryzhkovichi victims, who were already buried within a Jewish cemetery, seems to have been motivated by the hope of identifying individual bodies (thanks to the grave's late creation).

43. For example, Aleksandra Shumina recalls how she and her husband used to visit the Ryzhkovichi cemetery regularly to tend to the mass graves and the monuments. On Jewish holidays, Jewish natives of Shklov who had relatives buried there would come from Ukraine and Russia to visit the Ryzhkovichi monument (Testimony of Aleksandra Shumina, USC Shoah Foundation VHA #49152). Such pilgrimages were a continuation of prewar Jewish funerary culture, which emphasized visitation to relatives’ graves at particular times during the year. See Dymshitz, “Evreiskoe kladbische.”

44. See Altshuler, Religion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union, 212–15. The Soviet state's efforts to demolish and repurpose these sites were widely seen as antisemitic by both Soviet Jews and Jewish international observers. However, in fairness, Soviet development targeted older cemeteries of all confessions for demolition, with little regard for sentiment or superstition.

45. GARF f. 8114, op. 1, d. 1023, l. 6–8; copy YVA JM/26321; Daniel Romanovsky, “Klimovichi,” in Dean and Hecker, USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 2:1682–83.

46. See Arad, Holocaust in the Soviet Union, 189; Alexander Kruglov, “Cherikov,” trans. Steven Seegel, in Dean and Hecker, USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 2:1662–63 and Romanovsky, “Klimovichi,” 2:1682–83; GARF f. 7021, op. 88, d. 38, copy YVA JM/20012; GARF f. 8114, op. 1, d. 131, copy YVA JM/26128.

47. Romanovsky, “Klimovichi,” 2:1683. GARF f. 7021, op. 88, d. 38, copy YVA JM/20012.

48. Testimony of R., USHMM RG-68.186, Danill Romanovsky Collection, folder 24 (Khotimsk), 20. The victims from Melovaia Gora seem to have been added to the existing mass grave in the Jewish cemetery, united under a single undated monument.

49. In the immediate postwar years, Jewish Red Army veterans and other privileged members of Soviet society often felt they were well positioned to lead commemorative activities. Instead, they met with official resistance and, in some cases, sharp censure.

50. Anonymous testimony, USHMM RG-68.186, Danill Romanovsky Collection, folder 24 (Khotimsk), 9.

51. Yad Vashem photograph #2988/15.

52. Yad Vashem photograph #9772/1. Photograph #2988/13 shows the monument after the original Star of David was later defaced.

53. Lazar Khait, “Eto zabyt’ nel'zia. Ekho katastrofy,” June 13, 2010, http://evkol.ucoz.com/l_khait.htm. In September 1941, 389–560 Jews from Dobre had been shot at the edge of the village. Nine hundred Jews from the city of Mykolaiv were also shot and buried there. In addition to Jews, Soviet POWs and Roma were also shot at the site.

54. Presumably all of the other participants had settled elsewhere after the war. GARF f. 7021, op. 68, d. 177, l. 74, copy YVA JM/19716. Yad Vashem photograph #3916/2. Khait, “Eto zabyt’ nel'zia.” See entry in Yad Vashem's Online Guide of Murder Sites of Jews in the Former USSR, http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/institute/killing_sites_catalog_details_full.asp?region=Nikolayev&title=Nikolayev%20region.

55. Iakov Pasik, “Istoriia evreiskoi zemledel'cheskoi kolonii Dobraia,” February 9, 2007, http://evkol.ucoz.com/dobraya. Khait, “Eto zabyt’ nel'zia.”

56. A photograph from the monument's unveiling shows the mass grave at the edge of the district's cemetery. See Khait, “Eto zabyt’ nel'zia.”

57. Pasik, “Istoriia evreiskoi zemledel'cheskoi kolonii Dobraia.” Khait, “Eto zabyt’ nel'zia.”

58. Yad Vashem photograph #3916/2. See also photograph #3916/1.

59. Yad Vashem photograph #3916/3. Pasik, “Istoriia evreiskoi zemledel'cheskoi kolonii Dobraia.”

60. Yad Vashem photograph #3916/4. The plaque's failure to mention the victims’ Jewish nationality was likely due to official policy, but also because the bodies of Soviet POWs and Roma had also been discovered during the exhumation. See Pasik, “Istoriia evreiskoi zemledel'cheskoi kolonii Dobraia.”

61. Pasik, “Istoriia evreiskoi zemledel'cheskoi kolonii Dobraia.” Khait, “Eto zabyt’ nel'zia.”

62. Khait, “Eto zabyt’ nel'zia.” Dates of commemoration, much like the decision of whether to exhume mass graves, were determined locally. In Belarus, Tisha be-ʾAv became a popular day for visiting and commemorating mass graves. Elsewhere, it was more common to mark the actual anniversary of the shooting, either according to the Jewish calendar, or, more commonly, according to the Gregorian calendar. Soviet Jews also commonly held commemorative gatherings at mass graves on May 8—Soviet Victory Day. Smilovitsky, Jewish Life in Belarus, 166.

63. Martin Dean and Alexander Kruglov, “Grozovo,” trans. Ksenia Krimer, in Dean and Hecker, USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 2:1195; The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos during the Holocaust, 1:229; Lev Slobin, “Boris Gimel'shtein—poslednii evrei mestechka Grozovo,” http://shtetle.com/shtetls_minsk/grozovo/grozovo.html.

64. Testimony of Tamara Levina, YVA O.33/6476, available at https://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/commemorationWT.asp?cid=382; “Testimony of a Jewish Survivor about the Mass Murder of the Jews from Grozovo in Belarus,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MXhu8Kj-DM; “Testimony of a Jewish Survivor about the Mass Murder of the Jews from Grozovo in Belarus,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P-0Cw8BLMc; Slobin, “Boris Gimel'shtein.”

65. See photograph (courtesy of the Jewish History and Culture Museum of Belarus), available at “The Grozovo Forest,” Untold Stories, http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/murderSite.asp?site_id=484.

66. “Testimony of a Jewish Survivor about the Mass Murder of the Jews from Grozovo in Belarus,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P-0Cw8BLMc. These two monuments in Grozovo are unusual, not only because they specifically refer to the victims’ Jewish nationality, but because the inscriptions were approved and funded by the local authorities. In most instances, state-sponsored monuments (and even many privately sponsored monuments) contained euphemistic dedications to “victims of fascism,” “Soviet citizens,” or “peaceful residents.”

67. “Commemoration of Jewish Victims,” Untold Stories, http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/commemoration.asp?cid=382.

68. “List of Jewish Victims from Grozovo,” Untold Stories, http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/photos/382/victims_list(15)(1).pdf.

69. Testimony of Roza Fain, YVA O.3/3891, available at http://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/commemorationWT.asp?cid=382.

70. Yad Vashem photograph #1883/4.

71. Yad Vashem photograph #1883/5.

72. Conventional wisdom in the field of Soviet Jewish history has held that, with the liquidation of Jewish cultural institutions in the late 1940s, synagogues became the only viable site for Jewish public activism in the postwar period (see Altshuler, Religion and Jewish Identity, 52). However, the history of informal, landsmanshaft-like groups and their activism around mass graves offers a different perspective on postwar Soviet and Soviet Jewish civil society. For a more comprehensive discussion of this important function of Soviet Jews’ postwar commemorative culture, see Zeltser, Unwelcome Memory, 45–50, 228–45.

73. USHMM photograph #57741. For a detailed discussion of the reburial in Siemiatycze, see Finder, Gabriel N. and Cohen, Judith R., “Memento Mori: Photographs from the Grave,” Polin 20 (2008): 55–73, 59–62Google Scholar.

74. “Kozienice, 26 April 1949 – Permit and Exhumation Protocol,” Memorial Book of Kozienice (translation of Sefer zikaron le-kehilat Kosznitz), ed. Baruch Kaplinski, Zelig Berman, Mordekhai Donnerstein, Ratze Wasserman, Tzvi Madanes, Levi Mandel, Elimelekh Feigenbaum, Leibel Fishstein, and David Kestenberg (New York: The Kozienice Organization, 1985), 637–38, available at https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/kozienice/koz626.html.

75. USHMM photograph #42768.

76. Moshe Ruchman, “The Last Time in Kozienice,” Memorial Book of Kozienice, 628–30. Ratze Vasserman, “The Exhumation of Kozienice Martyrs,” ibid., 631–34, offers a similar account of the exhumation. He explains that the process took a total of four days and that a total of thirty-two Jewish individuals were exhumed.

77. David Golomb, “The Exhumation of Kozienice Martyrs,” Memorial Book of Kozienice, 634.

78. Ibid.

79. See Genesis 50:25 and Exodus 13:19.

80. “Jaunjelgava, the Jewish Cemetery,” Holocaust Memorial Places in Latvia, Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Latvia, http://memorialplaces.lu.lv/memorial-places/zemgale/jaunjelgava-the-jewish-cemetery/. Jaunjelgava was also known as Friedrichstadt in German or Neyre/Naira in Yiddish.

81. Mordechai Altshuler notes that the local authorities in the Baltic states were often more accommodating of Jewish commemorative efforts than in other regions of the Soviet Union (Religion and Jewish Identity in the Soviet Union, 220).

82. Testimony by Chaya Gurtsun (née Tabaksman), YIVO RG 104 (Eyewitness Accounts of the Holocaust Period), series III, box 4, folder 79, 1–3. See also “Jaunjelgava, the Jewish Cemetery”; “Jaunjelgava,” International Jewish Cemetery Project, International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, https://www.iajgsjewishcemeteryproject.org/latvia/jaunjelgava.html.

83. Anonymous testimony, USHMM RG-68.186, Danill Romanovsky Collection, folder 24 (Khotimsk), 5–9.