Interethnic Relations between Jewish and Non-Jewish Residents of Volyn before and during the Holocaust: Children’s Aspect

Abstract

The purpose of the research paper is to uncover the interethnic relations between Jewish and non-Jewish residents of Volyn before and during the Holocaust on the example of the situation with Jewish children.

The scientific novelty of the research paper is in the fact that, for the first time, using the experience of Jewish children before and during the Holocaust, the change in relations between Jewish and non-Jewish residents of Volyn has been analyzed.

The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, scientificity, objectivity, problem-historical and search methods, and the methods of analysis and systematization. The oral history method has become important as well.

Conclusions. Interethnic relations in the interwar period in Volyn were diverse. Prejudice and anti-Semitism against Jews existed, but this factor was marginal in the 1920s, and it somewhat intensified in the second half of the 1930s due to the strengthening of the positions of Nazism in Europe. Children of Jews and non-Jews reacted the least to those negative changes and were guided in their relationships by age and personal interests rather than political changes: they attended the same schools, made friends, played, and celebrated holidays together.

World War II and the Holocaust destroyed the framework of interethnic interaction and tolerance. Being a friend to a Jew during the Nazis’ ‘new order,’ where Jews were given the status of outcasts, had become not only unprofitable but also dangerous. Such changes were most traumatically felt by Jewish children, who did not understand why yesterday’s friends shunned, bullied, beat them, or tried to turn them in to the Nazis. The answer to these questions should be sought in numerous factors. Among them was not only the Nazi anti-Semitic policy, where Jews received the lowest status in the cohort of other nationalities, but also the behavioural reactions of local residents – ‘bystanders’ to the Jewish problem. The theory of baiting (bullying) can be helpful in understanding the relations between Jewish and non-Jewish children during the Holocaust, where the latter used baiting and violence against their peers, who in social terms had become an unprotected and weak link in the children’s society. The perpetrators knew that not only would they not suffer any punishment, but they would also have the opportunity to enrich themselves financially at their peers’ expense.

Funding. This project has received funding through the EURIZON project, which is funded by the European Union under grant agreement No. 871072.