This study will analyze the ambivalent debates surrounding Jewish history and primarily the Holocaust in the Russian-speaking Internet (Runet) in the wider context of domestic and foreign-policy developments and anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union after 1991. It will focus on the online portals, aimed at Russian-speaking Internet users, of Russian and foreign educational and research institutions as well as museums. The contribution of Jews to the development of the Runet and the problem of Holocaust denial in the Russian-speaking Internet will be discussed.

The number of online-projects in the field of Jewish history has steadily increased in the last few years. Nevertheless, there has been relatively little empirical research on the effects and consequences of the digital turn. This article tries to shed light on the current situation of digital Jewish history and to give an overview of the digital material available in order to encourage more debates about the specific demands and challenges in this field. Such debates gain in significance when considering the potential presented by the digital age for research and teaching in Jewish History.

In his film The Search (1948), the Jewish-American director Fred Zinnemann told the stories of children who survived concentration camps and of their lives in DP camps in postwar Germany. The film is a noteworthy historical document in a number of respects: Alongside its documentation of the children’s situation, this cinematic depiction contains points of reference to Zinnemann’s own life experiences. A planned follow-up project, Sabra, whose script was researched and developed in Israel and which was intended to dramatize a narrative of humanity amid the chaos of the war, proved unmanageable in the face of the events which had taken place. Although the notes on the project of which we are in possession indicate a promising approach to the topic, the film’s realization was unfeasible in the context of contemporary film funding and distribution practices in Hollywood.