Author Description

TOWARDS THE LIGHT OF DAWN Heroes of the Soviet Union In the Second World War, 1.5 million Jews fought with the Soviet Union and the Allies on the Russian Front, in Europe and Africa, in Near and Far East, at sea and in the air. There were 500,000 Jews in the Red Army alone, of whom 200,000 died in battle. Thousands of Russian soldiers of Jewish origin showed their courage in the struggle against the German army, and around 160,000 of them received medals and awards for bravery. More than 150 of them received the highest decorations – the Golden Star and the honorary title “Hero of the Soviet Union”. Three of them – D. A. Dragunski, M. J. Katukov and J. W. Smuskevich – were given the award twice. During and after the war, anti-Semites in the Soviet Union would assert that Jews had not fought at the Front but had stayed in the background awaiting its outcome. They even had a name for it: the “Tashkent Front”. The 150 or so biographies selected for this exhibition tell a different story. The artist and author Oz Almog creates a visual and textual panorama that captures the spirit of the time, a “hall of fame”, so to speak, of Jewish heroes. **It's a shear pity this book/catalog exists only in German.**