Background
Vasily Semyonovich Grossman was born into an emancipated Jewish family and didn't receive traditional Jewish eductaion.
journalist playwright prosaist
Vasily Semyonovich Grossman was born into an emancipated Jewish family and didn't receive traditional Jewish eductaion.
After graduation Grossman had been working as chemical engineer in Donbass, then returned to Moscow in 1933 and started his literary career a year after. Grossman interviewed former Sonderkommando inmates who escaped from Treblinka, and wrote his manuscript without revealing their identities. In addition to war journalism, his novels were being published in newspapers.
Heavily criticized Stalinizm and Soviet regime overall after the Black Book, a project of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee to document the crimes of the Holocaus, was supressed by Soviet authorities.
Moreover, Grossman criticized collectivization and political repression of peasants that ultimately led to the Holodomor tragedy.