"The essays range far and wide."
— Sheldon Kirshner, The Times of Israel, 5 Feb 2017

“One of this volume’s most significant achievements is that it contains material that will help educators teach about the Soviet Jewish experience as part of undergraduate courses on the Holocaust. Beautiful translations of Erenburg letters, Selvinskii’s and Slutskii’s poems, and Mikhail Romm’s accounts . . . are among the most valuable key texts, which will change the way the Holocaust is taught in North America. The combination of thorough analysis of new sources with the publication of primary materials make this volume a must-have for anyone interested in Soviet Jewish history and the Holocaust.”
— Anna Shternshis (University of Toronto)

The perpetrator-bystander-victim model that has by and large dominated Holocaust scholarship is challenged by the appearance of Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering, a collection of essays that examines the role of Soviet Jews as heroes during what the Soviets called the Great Patriotic War. Although the essays in the book cover different types of texts, they are united by a similar set of concerns ... demonstrating that in addition to the breadth of essays present here on the subject of the Holocaust in the Soviet context, the entire Soviet epoch ... is a treasure-trove
— Naya Lekht, University of California Los Angeles, Slavic and East European Journal 60.4 (Winter 2016)

“This excellent volume explores the important role that Soviet Jews played as combatants, journalists, writers, poets, film-makers and photo-correspondents waging war against the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. Rather than focusing on the Holocaust’s victims, these essays tell the stories of soldiers who fought on and survived the frontlines, and cultural figures who helped frame the Soviet narrative of the war. By highlighting Soviet Jewish martial achievement, this book raises awareness of the Jewish contribution to Soviet victory and counters the wartime and postwar slanders that Jews sat out the war safe behind the lines. It also draws attention to a wealth of previously unknown or neglected sources, including diaries, memoirs, newspapers, poetry, prose and archival documents.”

—Robert Dale, Newcastle University, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies

Gennady Estraikh is associate professor of Yiddish studies, Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. He is the author of Yiddish in the Cold War (2008), In Harness: Yiddish Writer's Romance with Communism (2004), Soviet Yiddish: Language Planning and Linguistic Development (1999) and the co-editor of Translating Sholem Aleichem: History, Politics, and Art (2012) and 1929: Mapping the Jewish World (2013).

Harriet Murav is professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Hey studies of Dostoyevsky, Russian law and literature, and twentieth century Russian and Yiddish literature are complemented by her most recent monograph, Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia (2011). She is the co-editor of Jews in the East European Borderlands: Essays in Honor of John Klier (2012).