Irina Tcherneva’s presentation examines Soviet film documentation of Nazi war crimes in the territories of Eastern Europe under German occupation. A central question this presentation addresses, is how to separate Bolshevik narratives about these crimes from authentic documentary evidence. To answer this, Irina Tcherneva draws upon her experience in collecting and analyzing documentary footage filmed by Soviet cameramen during World War II, as part of the Visual History of the Holocaust project. This collection of documentation presents several distinctive features when compared to the American and British film documents. The presentation demonstrates how visual material created in Stalin’s Soviet Union can contribute to our understanding of Holocaust history.
Extreme Violence: The Visual Documentation of Nazi Crimes in the Soviet Union
Presentation by Irina Tcherneva at the conference "Gewalt, Erinnerung und Versöhnung: Wahrheit als Konfliktfeld zwischen Wissenschaft und Demokratie"
Despite their occasional use for the purpose of political propaganda, Soviet documents provide a rich source for the study of the Holocaust.
