‘Soul Destroyers’: Soviet Reporting of Nazi Genocide and its Perpetrators at the Krasnodar and Khar′kov Trials

Abstract

The Soviet war crimes trials at Krasnodar, in July 1943, and Khar′kov, in December 1943, are rarely considered, or thought to contribute to understanding of the Holocaust. This article argues that, despite their propagandist aims, unsound legal basis and silence over the specific fate of the Jews, the trials were discussed by the Soviet press in ways which anticipate understanding of the Holocaust. The picture of systematic gassings of civilians in gas vans, termed ‘soul destroyers’ by the Soviets, pointed to the industrialized approach to mass murder which defines the Holocaust and the camps. At Khar′kov, in journalistic reports, especially those of Konstantin Simonov and Il′ia Erenburg, the mentality of the murderers was for the first time revealed as one of bureaucratic routine and self-interest, rather than demonic or animal brutality, thus pre-empting Hannah Arendt's analysis of Adolf Eichmann as an example of the ‘banality of evil’. Likewise, the defendants' insistence that they were following orders foreshadowed the same defence at Nuremberg, and this issue was addressed in the Soviet press. Despite the insight into the criminals granted by this reporting, the Nazis' targeting of the Jews in the Krasnodar and Khar′kov regions was virtually passed over in silence during the trials, but extensively discussed in articles published separately by Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi. These materials enable us to trace anew the process by which the reality of the Holocaust was first apprehended.