Voices from the Caucasus

Voices from the Caucasus reconstructs the Holocaust experiences of Mountain Jews in the Soviet North Caucasus and Crimea, tracing how German occupation, local collaboration, rescue, and unstable ethnic classification shaped sharply divergent wartime outcomes. Drawing on archival records, survivor testimonies, community publications, and oral-history interviews with second- and third-generation narrators in Russia and Israel, the book examines not only what happened during the war, but also how these events were remembered afterward. The study follows Mountain Jewish Holocaust memory from Soviet-era constraint into post-Soviet Russia, Israel, and the wider diaspora. It shows how this memory moved between domestic storytelling and public commemoration, between Great Patriotic War narratives and Holocaust remembrance, and between local North Caucasian landscapes and transnational Jewish identity. The book argues that Holocaust memory became a central medium through which Mountain Jews negotiated identity, belonging, and recognition across changing political regimes. By placing Mountain Jews at the center of analysis, Voices from the Caucasus expands the geography of Holocaust studies and offers a new perspective on Soviet Jewish history, non-Ashkenazi experiences of the Holocaust, and the transmission of memory across generations. Recipient of the 2026 Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award.