Save Your Souls: Jewish Conversion and Survival in the Occupied Soviet Territories During the Holocaust

Abstract

Religion is one of many factors that can help to elucidate aspects of Jewish and non-Jewish behavior during the Holocaust. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Europe was already well advanced in a process of secularization; however, the process was uneven, with Eastern and Southern Europe remaining arguably more traditionally religious regions. Consequently, we must consider religion as a factor, both in motivating non-Jews to help Jews threatened existentially by the Nazis and, conversely, that non-Jews driven by different religious considerations might also act against Jews. Viewed from this perspective, gauging the impact of religion in Soviet territories occupied by Axis armies constitutes a formidable difficulty. Since its inception, the Soviet state has pursued policies alienating all religions, which climaxed in an actual anti-religious crusade targeting the remaining religious leaders and laymen during the immediate prewar period. Nevertheless, religion persisted in the Soviet Union. Some 57 percent of Soviet citizens defined themselves as believers in the 1937 population census. The combined effect of these factors, prompted by active German promotion of religion in the context of their struggle against the “godless Judeo-Bolsheviks” seems to have brought a certain degree of religious revival in the occupied Soviet territories under German and auxiliary Axis rule. This article assesses the role of religion, most specifically conversion, viewed as a capstone of religious experience, when a Jew was caught on the horns of a dilemma whether—and to what extent—to cling to his or her “born” religion, or to relinquish it, hoping to survive in the occupied Soviet territories. Regarding history from below, it is necessary to address the methodological problem of what responses can be qualified as religious. For the purposes of this study, the area to be scrutinized was narrowed to