In this ground-breaking book, based on archival and field research and previously unknown historical evidence, Maxim D. Shrayer introduces the work of Ilya Selvinsky, the first Jewish-Russian poet to depict the Holocaust (Shoah) in the occupied Soviet territories.  In January 1942, while serving as a military journalist, Selvinsky witnessed the immediate aftermath of the massacre of thousands of Jews outside the Crimean city of Kerch, and thereafter composed and published poems about it. Shrayer painstakingly reconstructs the details of the Nazi atrocities witnessed by Selvinsky, and shows that in 1943, as Stalin’s regime increasingly refused to report the annihilation of Jews in the occupied territories, Selvinsky paid a high price for his writings and actions. This book features over 60 rare photographs and illustrations and includes translations of Selvinsky’s principal Shoah poems. “This beautifully close reading of a major Soviet poet restores for us an important vision of the Holocaust.” -- Timothy Snyder “Ilya Selvinsky was a Soviet Jewish poet writer who wrote explicitly about the Holocaust at a time when most Soviet writers avoided the subject. Though Selvinsky was in and out of political trouble, his undeniable talent and Stalin’s grudging admiration allowed him to survive. Maxim D. Shrayer tells his story vividly, comprehensively and convincingly. Unlike many literary studies, this deeply researched book is accessible, gripping and free of jargon. We learn not only about Selvinsky and other wartime writers, but also about Soviet policy toward the Holocaust and how it changed; the tense relations between the Party-State and writers; and the complexities of Jewish identities in the USSR.” -- Zvi Gitelman, Professor of Political Science and Preston R. Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies, University of Michigan “I Saw It is a major contribution to our knowledge and understanding of how Soviet Jewish writers and the regime in general responded to the Nazi massacres of Jews in German-occupied Soviet territory. As a soldier, poet, and journalist, Ilya Selvinsky was often on the front line, struggling to comprehend the enormity of the destruction and suffering around him. Based on painstaking and comprehensive research, Maxim D. Shrayer does a superb job of conveying the challenges of being a Soviet patriot and a Jew in the face of Hitler’s onslaught.” -- Joshua Rubenstein “Soviet Jews, serving on the Eastern front, were the first to document the German war against the Jews. The most memorable response was, indeed, the first: a Russian-language poem so immediate, so personal and so graphic, that even Stalin and his henchmen could not suppress the poem, nor, try as they did, the courageous poet who authored it. This is the remarkable story, never before told, of the Jewish-Russian poet Ilya Selvinsky, who despite all odds first taught his fellow Jews and Russians how to mourn their incalculable losses.” -- David G. Roskies, Sol and Evelyn Henkind Professor of Yiddish Literature, Jewish Theological Seminary. Director, Center for Yiddish Studies, Ben Gurion University of the Negev ― The Hebrew University of Jerusalem “Comprehensive, meticulously researched, erudite, and up-to-date, with sober assessments and insightful interpretive comments, Maxim D. Shrayer’s study of Ilya Selvinsky closes gaps both in the history of Soviet Russian literature and in the history of the literature of the Holocaust.” -- Leona Toker “Maxim D. Shrayer’s searing account of the struggles of a famous Soviet-Jewish poet and military officer, Ilya Selvinsky, is among the most original and illuminating studies of the Holocaust as experienced by a generation of Soviet intellectuals who witnessed the atrocities and were at the forefront of Stalin’s propaganda war against Nazism. Shrayer’s research on Selvinsky is impressive and stunning. Scholars and students alike will appreciate Shrayer’s presentation of Selvinsky’s moving poetry, revealing diary entries, and rare family photographs―all of this rich material Shrayer contextualizes in a deep historical and literary analysis of this era's fanatical idealism and genocide. Standing at the edge of a mass grave of Jewish victims in his native region of Crimea at Kerch, Selvinsky followed his conscience by writing the poem, “I Saw It,” to testify, and express his outrage and grief. In this penetrating book of Selvinsky's struggles, Shrayer pays a double tribute―to a shattered idealist and patriot who captured the soul of his people in his poetry, and to the victims of the Shoah whose voices like those of a generation of Soviet Jewish intellectual-witnesses were muted by postwar Soviet censors who suppressed the Holocaust.” -- Wendy Lower “In I Saw It, Maxim D. Shrayer meticulously and unflinchingly chronicles the Nazi massacre of Jews in Kerch, Crimea, and its reflection in Ilya Selvinsky’s extraordinarily powerful poems. Selvinsky, a convinced communist generally willing to compromis