Karaite men in traditional garb, Crimea, 19th century.

A great read, imperative for anyone who wants to understand the cultural outset of Ukraine. The book especially covers the frontier dimensions of Ukrainian history in great detail.

As I read Paul Magosci’s account of Ukraine’s history [Paul R Magocsi, A History of Ukraine : the Land and its Peoples (Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2010).] over the summer of 2011 at Harvard University I came across a historical detail I have never heard of before. The textbook highlighted how the Karaite branch of Judaism was exempted from persecution under the Nazi regime. This fact baffled me so much that I decided to focus my research on Karaite judaism, its schismatic roots, its subsequent migration patterns and the treatment it received under the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and subsequent kingdoms and regimes. 

Whilst the paper is too long for a blog post I do want to share a short passage of it, which outlines the legal exemption of persecution for Karaite jews throughout WWII: 

Throughout WWII the pronounced anti-Russian and anti-Soviet sentiments voiced by the leaders of the various Turkic and Caucasian groups were well received by many high ranking Nazi officials.[1] As a result more than four cases of exemptions were granted by the Nazi Germans to groups of “Jewish” origin. Apart from the Karaites, Judeo-Tats, Georgian Jews, and Bukharan Jews were given exemption from persecution.[2] Estimates suggest that the exemption of these four groups led to 85,000 people being theoretically exempted from persecution.[3]

It is in 1938 that 18 Karaites residing in the Reich asked for an exemption from the discriminatory anti-Jewish legislation resulting from the Nuremberg laws.[4] The ensuing studies drew from the Tsarist scholarship and findings[5] however had a distinctive racial component to it, which was in line with the Nazi racial policy. Hence schismatic roots and confessions held less importance than the genealogical background of the Karaites. On January 5^th 1939, the Reichsstelle fuer Sippenforschung (Reich’s Department for Genealogical Research) declared that the Karaites not to be considered Jews and therefore to be exempted from all anti-Jewish legislation.[6] The letter of exemption stated that:

The Karaite sect should not be considered a Jewish religious community within the meaning of paragraph 2 point 2 of the First Regulation to the Reich’s Citizenship Law. However, it cannot be established that Karaites in their entirety are of blood-related stock, for the Crimean Jewish Communities 171 racial categorization of an individual cannot be determined without further ado by his belonging to a particular people, but by his personal ancestry and racial biological characteristics[7]

The Nazi fixation on racial and biological characteristics helped the Karaites in their case. Unlike under the Tsarist regime the Karaites did not have to prove the absence of presence in Jerusalem at the time of the killing of Jesus but their ancestral traits. Since the Crimean Karaites severed themselves from the Babylonian Jewish community in the eighth century C.E they were able to prove that they did not,“…descend from at least three grandparents who were, racially, full Jews…” Hence the Karaite community failed to fulfill paragraph two of article two in the First Supplementary Decree of November 14^th, 1935 of the Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race of September 15^th, 1935, which states that:

An individual of mixed Jewish blood is one who is descended from one or two grandparents who, racially, were full Jews, insofar that he is not a Jew according to Section 2 of Article 5.  Full-blooded Jewish grandparents are those who belonged to the Jewish religious community.[8]

Some scholars such as Warren Paul Green estimate that this ruling saved the lives of approx. 12,000 Karaites in Germany, France, Poland and the Soviet Union during WWII.[9] However it is to be noted that:

Although legally exempted from persecution Karaites were among the 33,771 Jews of Kiev who were executed by members of the Einsatzgruppe C, Sonderkommando 4A under the command of SS Colonel Paul Blobel on September 29-30th, 1941. In addition Nazi SS troops rarely differentiated between Jewish denominations whilst on their killing sprees.