Humanity as a whole and especially in the West quite rightly remembers the Holocaust and the industrial mass murder of Europe’s Jews. From the moment that the newsreels containing images of liberated death camps hit the screens of audiences in cinemas across the world, the world heard names that can and should never be forgotten, names such as Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz. But what of the other mass murders of Jews that occurred in Europe some of which happened before the Germans had really got going with their fanatically genocidal policies? I’m speaking here about the Jews of the Soviet Union and Josef Stalin’s attempt to not just kill the bodies of Jews but to kill Judaism itself. Jews were killed in Stalin’s Soviet Union not on the massive numbers as were killed by the Germans, thousands not millions and we should remember that those Jews often were murdered primarily because of their faith or their background, at the hands of Stalin.

Stalin’s murders of Jews, along with many tens of thousands of non-Jews, was almost forgotten or passed over by mainstream society or erased from history by Communists. Even the names of the places where these mass murders took place have been forgotten or deliberately hidden. This is why we know of Sobibor but not Kommunarka and Belzec but not Butovo.

Dovid Margolin has written a brilliant piece for the politically conservative Jewish magazine Commentary. In it he goes on a visit to Russia and visits Kommunarka which was both a Stalinist execution centre and also a mass grave for those murdered. Buried somewhere in the ground at Kommunarka is Mr Margolin’s Great-Grandfather Solomon Levenson who was murdered there and he wanted to visit the site of that murder and say a prayer for the dead.

In his piece Mr Margolin speaks of how these Stalinist killing sites were and still are to a certain extent, unknown. He said that even in 1999 there was not a full picture available of these killing centres or the associated mass graves. A lot of this forgetting he said was deliberate. Few in the Soviet Union spoke of these killing fields and after they fell out of use they were guarded continually by KGB officers who in later years often did not know why they were guarding particular places.

The mass deaths of Jews under Stalin was part of an attempt to wipe out not just Jews as a people but the idea of Judaism itself, as Communism could have no challenger in the form of G-d for people’s hearts and minds. Communism has to have the state take full control of everything and the idea that people would worship G-d instead of the state is anathema to those steeped in Communist ideology.

Mr Margolis said: “Hitler wanted to destroy us physically,” the martyred Soviet Yiddish poet Peretz Markish remarked shortly before his own 1949 arrest. “Stalin wants to do it spiritually.”

Mr Margolis then added:

In this way, Communism represents a uniquely horrifying chapter in Jewish history. From the Soviet Union’s earliest days, it waged a relentless war on the Jewish soul and kept at it for more than 70 years. Communism, by cutting off three generations of Soviet Jews from their religious life and heritage, attempted to rob them of their very essence. That’s what stands out about Stalin’s killing fields. Jews, these places declare, are no different.

“There exists,” the political theoretician Hans J. Morgenthau told Congress in 1971, “a spirit of terror and attack upon the very spiritual existence of the Soviet Jews which, while entirely different and less obvious in nature than was the Nazi persecution, may be no less painful for the souls of the individuals and no less disastrous for the survival of the Jewish community in the Soviet Union.”

In the face of such a tremendous force, it is natural that the vast majority of Soviet Jews could not maintain their religious observance, and it would have been perfectly logical had at least some large percentage not retained their basic identity as Jews. Yet, in blatant defiance of history’s forward march, when Soviet Jews finally began leaving the Soviet Union, they identified not as Soviet citizens of Jewish extraction, but as Soviet Jews. What explains this astounding fact—how did Soviet Jews remain Jews?

One difficulty in appreciating the terrible odds Soviet Jewry faced, and so the uniqueness of their survival, is that few have a conception of the overwhelming enormity of Bolshevik terror. Indeed, to this day very little has been published in English on the scope and mechanics of Stalin’s shooting grounds and mass graves. Which is why the silent forest of Kommunarka is a good place to start.

This was a fascinating piece by Mr Margolis about a time of horror that has been almost forgotten by people who will otherwise be aware of history. It’s especially good in trying to describe how some Jews did their utmost not to be erased as Jews and turned in to the ‘perfect’ Soviet Man.

This article also reminds me that there is an enormous double standard in our society where we quite rightly shovel opprobrium onto the Nazis and instinctively recoil at Nazi imagery and Nazi policies, but which indulges and panders to those who fly the Hammer and Sickle flag. We tolerate, and I did the same when I was on the Left, the Stalinist cosplayers and LARPers at left wing demonstrations but are intolerant rightly when different political groups use imagery and language that is associated with the Nazis. As we start, incredibly slowly in my view, to learn more about what happened in the Soviet Union prior to its fall, the more I believe we should treat Communism with the opprobrium that it deserves. The road to Sobibor started out with Nazi philosophy and it’s right and proper that we know and understand that, but there is a whole lot more to do to show people that the road to killing centres like Kommunarka started with Karl Marx and those who treated this man’s rantings as a blueprint for society.