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The Black Book
Historian Catherine Merridale chronicles the tortuous journey of Vasily Grossman鈥檚 novel STALINGRAD to print. Victory over the Nazi鈥檚 brought neither freedom or truth.
Historian Catherine Merridale chronicles the tortuous passage of Vasily Grossman鈥檚 novel STALINGRAD to print.
Even before Grossman began to prepare his novel STALINGRAD for publication it became clear that victory over the Nazi鈥檚 would not bring any hard won freedoms or historical truth. Grossman, in his role as a front line Soviet journalist, had documented Nazi atrocities including the workings of the death camp of Treblinka. His mother had been murdered in his Ukrainian home town of Berdichev.
As the war had progressed he had assumed editorship of The Black Book-a vast and harrowing collection of first hand accounts of Nazi genocide on Soviet soil. Grossman himself wrote the stark chapter on the murder of the Jews of Berdichev. It would never see publication until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Closed down on Stalin鈥檚 orders it was the first intimation of a new campaign of repression & terror
Reader: Anton Lesser
Producer: Mark Burman