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Quite a number (far from the majority, but certainly more than would be expected for an avowed antisemite) Eastern Bloc communists that Stalin put in positions of authority in East Germany, Hungary, Poland Czecheslovakia and Romania immediately after WW2 were Jewish. If Stalin was the kind of person to genocide Jews, he probably wouldn't have done so. Markus Wolf was one of the most important figures in Soviet/East German intelligence for the entire history of the DDR and was Jewish. Again, this doesn't seem like the behavior of someone who would have genocided Jews. Stalin's actions regarding ethnic transfers and his hysteria about the 'doctors' plot' were the product of what one might call an 'HBD mindset', an awareness of group dynamics as a Georgian himself. But he did not display the particular contempt for Jews specifically that Hitler did.
Immigration to Palestine/Israel before and after 1947 was thoroughly recorded. The same is true for immigration to the UK and US. Soviet Jewish communities would have noticed an influx of millions of otherwise unrecorded Jews streaming in during or after WW2; they did not. The Ashkenazi Jewish population of other countries is relatively well documented. There really isn't any good evidence that the Jews who vanished from Poland in WW2 ever reappeared anywhere else.
I don't know that I ever expected to be accused of declaring that my own people have unjust privilege on this board (if anything, it's usually the inverse!) but my point was that Stalin supposedly engaging in a secret genocide of regular Jewish civilians in Eastern Europe - as alleged by some Holocaust revisionists - is pretty ridiculous. The climate in the USSR in the crucial period 1940-1945 (actually well before peak Soviet antisemitism in 1952) wasn't indicative of an environment in which Jews were genocided by the Soviets.
Widespread legal discrimination against poor African Americans didn't occur in the United States in the 1990s, mass incarceration as a result of tough-on-crime policies saw surges in the number of prisoners of all ethnicities in the US). There was absolutely antisemitism in postwar Eastern Europe - I mention elsewhere in this thread Ana Pauker, who was definitely forced out of office (and would have been executed had the big man not died) by Stalin for being Jewish with relatives in Israel, and for allowing Jews to leave Romania as Foreign Minister. There was indeed a well-documented pogrom in Poland in 1946! This was a return to the way things had long been for Jews in the region.
So they vanished, silently assimilating into the gentile population (ironically, as I have argued, this is an excellent argument against ethnic antisemitism), whereupon they were never heard from again. Even as the USSR disintegrated and emigration to Israel provided an escape hatch for the Soviet Jews who had remained aware of their Jewish identity, these people never raised a hand. As religious freedom returned in the postwar Soviet age, they never thought to visit a synagogue or reconnect with the Jewish community their ancestors had been part of for more than 2000 years. In forty years, they forgot they were even Jewish (meanwhile Conversos in the Iberian world took centuries to shed their Jewishness), such that today their children and grandchildren have no idea what they are. It seems unlikely, to say the least.
That, I’m afraid, is precisely my point. Every single one of the examples you cite is extensively documented. An alleged Soviet genocide of Jews is not. And in any case, it’s hard for me to understand what you’re arguing for. Are you suggesting the Soviets killed the Jews or silently (and more effectively than any other state in history) assimilated them? Both are false, but they’re very different accusations.
I don’t claim there was any preferential treatment, only similar treatment to the majority of those other ethnic groups, who were not subject to genocide even if they were subject to persecution.
Alright, but in future, please clearly state your claims when making arguments on The Motte, it helps everyone participate!
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