Origin
The 20th century was a turbulent era for humanity at large. World War II alone was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 50-70 million people including a staggering estimated 40-55 million civilians. The atrocities committed by the Nazi regime and the POW camps of the Axis Powers has been well documented for the purpose of accountability on the part of perpetrators in the years which followed, and more importantly, for the purpose of spreading awareness and educating future generations as to the lessons learned, preventing future proliferations of the darkest capacities of humanity.
Less well known and far less recorded are the accounts of human conditions under the Soviet Union regime of the World War II era, specifically under the rule of Joseph Stalin. By some estimates, upward of 20 million people lost their lives as a byproduct of regime policies, including the forced collectivization of its agricultural sector, the Great Purge, the Gulag system, and mass deportation. To be sure, as opposed to war, during which lives are lost as a result of hot conflicts between separate nations and ideologies, the loss of lives under the Soviet Union most tragically resulted from government acts against its own people.
Mission
No single group of people was more affected by the Soviet Union regime than the Jewish people living under its will. Central to the Soviet policies was communism, which spurred any belief in religion. As a result, to the extent that survival of any people during the WWII era was not assured, the survival of the Jewish people under the rule of the Soviet Union was truly miraculous.
The mission of the Priceless Legacy Initiative is to record survival accounts directly from the children of the remarkable generation who survived WWII-era Soviet Union persecution.
During the late 1900s, the combination of religious and cultural persecution, antisemitism, and the longing for self-determination fueled the desire for many of these individuals to leave their country of origin, with approximately 400,000 Jewish refugees having fled the Soviet Union during the 1970s, late 1980s and early 1990s. These individuals contain intimate knowledge of miraculous survival accounts from their parents, accounts which must be recorded for the benefit of future generations.