The outstanding prose writer of the 20th century Vasily (real name Iosif) Grossman was born on December 12, 1905 in Berdychiv in an assimilated Jewish family. His parents came from wealthy families. Solomon Grossman, a Bessarabian merchant, was a chemical engineer, a graduate of the University of Bern; Kateryna - his mother, grew up in an Odessa family, was educated in France, and taught French. The young parents kindly called their son Iosif and jokingly Vasya. The writer later chose this name as his literary pseudonym.
Iosif was a child when his parents divorced. At first he studied under his mother's care at a school in Switzerland, then the two of them moved to Kyiv, where his father lived. There Iosif graduated from a real school, entered the Kiev Higher Institute of Public Education, and from there transferred to the chemical department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. After graduating, Iosif worked in the acquired specialty in Donbass. However, more and more important in his life was literature, the love for which his mother instilled in him from childhood.
V. Grossman's first story "In the town of Berdychiv" was published in 1934 in the "Literary newspaper". (This is the same story, based on which in 1967 the director O. Askoldov made the film "Commissar", which was banned and shown only two decades later - during the perestroika). The story reflects Grossman's impressions of his stay in Berdychiv during the Civil War, vividly conveys the atmosphere of a Jewish town of the revolutionary-pogrom era.
In the summer of 1941, V. Grossman was mobilized and served as a military correspondent for the "Red Star" newspaper. During the Battle of Stalingrad, from the first to the last day, he was in the city, taking part in battles on the front line. The life experience of those times was the basis of the writer's largest novel, "Life and Destiny". At the same time, Vasilyl received the tragic news of his mother's death in Nazi-occupied Berdychiv. Kateryna was relocated to the ghetto and shot in one of the first actions of Jewish extermination. Until the end of his life Vasily wrote letters to his mother…
V. Grossman was among the correspondents who were the first to see the Maidanek and Treblinka camps liberated by Soviet troops. By publishing the article "Treblin Hell" (1944), the writer opened the topic of the Holocaust in the USSR. However, Grossman was not allowed to continue it. A collection of materials on the Nazi extermination of the Jews, the "Black Book" (V. Grossman worked on it together with I. Ehrenburg) was finished, but was not published - an anti-Semitic campaign was gaining momentum in the country. The first Russian-language edition of the "Black Book" was published in Israel in 1980.
In the postwar period, the prose writer wrote the most significant works - the novel "Life and Destiny", the story "Everything passes…". Criticism of Stalinism in them went far beyond what was allowed, even in the days of Khrushchev's liberalization. V. Grossman exposes the common nature of two totalitarian regimes - Nazi and communist, raises the topic of the Ukrainian famine of 1932/33, anti-Semitism in the USSR - not only domestic but also state. So it is not surprising that these works were not published, and the writer was subjected to the most severe persecution. As M. Suslov, the country's chief ideologue, stated at a meeting with V. Grossman, there can be no talk of publishing "Life and Destiny" in the next 200-300 years. At the same time, the State Security Committee made sure that the manuscript of the novel did not go abroad (the Chekists already had an unpleasant experience with Borys Pasternak's novel "Doctor Zhivago"). Grossman's apartment was searched, the manuscript and drafts were confiscated, and a receipt was taken from the author stating that he had no other copies of the manuscript. So, in fact, the writer was taken hostage by the KGB.
As a result of severe nervous concussions, Vasyli fell ill. He tried not to give in to despair, continued to work. However, on September 14, 1964, V. Grossman died.
Fortunately, the prediction of the communist leader did not come true, we did not have to wait for the works of W. Grossman for so long. They are available to readers in the library of Museum "Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine"
1. Гроссман В. Годы войны. Москва: ОГИЗ, 1946. 504 с.
3. Гроссман В. Жизнь и судьба: Роман. Кишинев, 1989. 783 с.