According to Ehrenburg , the mandatory State literary commission did not commit to publish the book in October 1944 : " Instead of a straight answer , the resolution was : ' write the book , and if it comes out well , it would be published . ' But it is not we who are the authors , it is the fascists ... What does that mean , ' comes out well ' this is not a novel , it is a document . " The book was partially printed in the Soviet Union by the Yiddish publisher '' Der Emes '' , however the entire edition , the typefaces , as well as the manuscript , were destroyed . First the censors ordered changes in the text to conceal the specifically anti-Jewish character of the atrocities and to downplay the role of some Ukrainians who worked as Nazi police officers . In 1948 the Soviet edition of the book was scrapped completely . The collection of original documents that Ehrenburg handed down to the Vilnius Jewish Museum after the war was secretly returned to him upon the Museum 's termination in 1948 . The JAC was also disbanded , its members purged at the outset of the state campaign against the " rootless cosmopolitans " , a Soviet euphemism for Jews . ( See also the Doctors ' plot ) . Typically , the official Soviet policy regarding the Holocaust was to present it as atrocities committed against Soviet citizens , without acknowledging the genocide of the Jews
purged
Great Purge
The Black Book of Soviet Jewry