Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg: Soviet Jews on the Nazis and Soviets

Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg were both significantly influential writers in the Soviet Union during and after World War II. Grossman and Ehrenburg were both Jewish war correspondents and witnessed Nazi war crimes. Prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trial used The Hell of Treblinka, written by Grossman, as evidence. Following the war, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union began to implement increasingly anti-Semitic policies. Jewish citizens faced discrimination, the Soviet state opposed “dividing the dead” of World War II, and it culminated in the Jewish Doctors Plot in 1953. Both writers covered extensively the Holocaust and how to treat Germany after the war. Grossman was a lot less aggressive compared to Ehrenburg’s fierce hostility. Ehrenburg did not take a strong explicit stance on Soviet discrimination, at times defending Stalin. Grossman, instead, wrote extremely critical comparisons between Soviets and Nazi policies