Book documents Holocaust in FSU

   October 1, 2009.  KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) - A new encyclopedia documents the history of the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union.

Ilya Altman, leader of the project and co-chair of the Russian Holocaust Center of Moscow; Alla Gerber, president of the Moscow Holocaust Foundation; and Anatoly Podolsky, director of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies, presented the encyclopedia Thursday at a seminar on the Holocaust.

Leaders of the project, scientists, formers prisoners of ghettos and concentration camps, and educators particpated in the seminar at the Institution of Political, Ethnic and National Studies of the Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences in Kiev.

The “Encyclopedia of Holocaust on the territory of the USSR” features newly discovered and mostly unpublished photos, facts and recollections. The book also contains documents that shed new light on Jewish life during the occupation and Holocaust.

The encyclopedia includes articles by nearly 100 authors from 12 countries, including biographical articles and those devoted to the key issues of the Holocaust.

The authors used materials from more than 70 archives and museums in the Russian Federation and former Soviet countries, as well as Israel, Germany, Poland, the United States and France.