The Holocaust in the Soviet Mass Media in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume 39:2

The Holocaust in the Soviet Mass Media during the War and in the First Postwar Years Re-examined

This article examines reporting on the Holocaust in the Russian-language mass media in the USSR. The article aims to dispel the common misconception that the Soviet regime forbade the mass media from referring to the extermination of the Jews. The general media deliberately did not stress the fact that the Jews were the only ethnic group in the occupied territories that was being subjected to annihilation, or that they faced a situation that was any different from the general population, because they were eager not to give the Nazi propaganda machine an opportunity to claim that the USSR was controlled by Jews. In reality, in terms of how the Holocaust was presented during the war, there was no real difference between the Soviet mass media and their counterparts in the West.