ABSTRACT
For instance, Norman Naimark, while discussing at length the similarities between Nazi and Bolshevik anti-Semitism, was forced to touch upon the Stalinist politics against certain other nationalities in 1938 and during the Second World War. The memoirs related to the situation of Jews used that mention and/or deal with the phenomenon of Soviet state anti-Semitism were not necessarily written by Jews. Thus, being a Jew could retrospectively mean having been a victim of Stalin and the system, irrespective of a person's contemporary position in the system's nomenklatura and his/her deeds. Highly interesting are the unpublished memoirs of another party historian, who was very sensitive about the Jewish question. Blank officially became a candidate of historical sciences in July 1953. In fact, the interviewees’ personal trauma was rather the Great Terror of the late 1930s, while the postwar period’s anti-Semitism was rather a retrospectively learned, less personal trauma.
