The Summary of of the book “The Captivity” by Dr. A.Shneyer.
Unlike the jewish prisoners of war from Western countris, Great Britain,
France, USA, the fate of the soviet jews taken into the German captivity
was much more tragic. Besides the Fact that the destruction of the Soviet
jewish prisoners of war was a part of Hitleris global program. Of the
annihilation of jews, the Soviet jews taken captive were considered
more dangerous because the Nazi leaders thought them to be “the carriers
of the Bolshevist ideology”.
In the Former USSR the study of the problem of captivity and tragedy
of prisoners of war and especially the tracing of the fates of the jews
taken captive was prohibited.
The author began working on this problem still in Latvia, were he met
the former prisoners of war, wrote down their reminiscences, worked
in local archieves.
After cowing to Israel where he got the opportunity to work with earlier
unaccessable materials, Dr. Sneyer continued his research. In his work
he used the dokuments stored in Yad Vashem and materials from now accessible
archieves of Latvia, Russia and Ukraine.
New meetings and interviews (over 50 all in all) with former prisoners
of war now Israeli residents, non published memoirs and the diaries
of former jewis prisoners of war written both during the war and after
it essentially extended the sources of the book.
In his ressearch Dr.Shneyer tracks a place and a role of the jews in
the Red army since its establishing up to the and of the World War II.
The problem of antisemitism in the Red Army before the war and in the
postwar period is considered separately.
The German antimitic propoganda and its influence on the Fate of the
jewis soldiers in the Red Army is examined in detail. The author points
out the social and politikal reasons of the soviet soldiers beging taken
captive.
In his book Dr. Shneyer mentions the tragical regularity of the fates
of the jewish prisoners of war and of their relations with their comrades
in the captivity. The destiny of the captive jews very often depended
on these relations.
The particular examples speak both about treachary and about the facts
of selfsacrifice on the part of nonjewish prisoners of war.
The author also tracks the attitude of local population to the jewish
prisoners of war. Yt notes that this attitude differed in different
areas of the occupied territory of the USSR.
The book is furnished with a detailed bibliography that includes literature
in Russian, English, German, Polish, and other languages. The book also
contains the geographical and nominal indexcs, tables.