I wrote:
--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I know some people consider the Karaim and Crimchak
> Jews to be a remnant of the Khazars. In the Russian
> Empire at any rate the Karaim were considered to be
> Jewish by religion but not by nationality (i.e.
> since
> they are a Turkic people they were deemed to be a
> separate group from the Yiddish-speaking Jews and
> were
> not guilty of having killed Christ) and so were
> exempt
> from anti-Jewish legislation. I don't know if
> anybody
> attempted to tie that into the Kharar Empire at the
> time, though ut is not a difficult inference to
> make.
Here's ever-trustworthy Wikipedia on this:
In the Russian Empire
Nineteenth-century leaders of the Karaims, such as Sima Babovich and Avraham Firkovich, were driving forces behind a concerted effort to de-Judaize the Karaite community in eyes of the Russian legal system. Firkovich in particular was adamant in his attempts to connect the Karaims with the Khazars, and has been accused of forging documents and inscriptions to back up his claims.
Ultimately, the Tsarist government officially recognized the Karaims as being of Turkic, not Jewish, origin, a political ruling that has little basis in historical fact. Because the Karaims were judged to be innocent of the death of Jesus, they were exempt from many of the harsh restrictions placed on other Jews. They were, in essence, placed on equal legal footing with Crimean Tatars. The related Krymchak community, which was of similar ethnolinguistic background but which practiced rabbinical Judaism, continued to suffer under Tsarist anti-Jewish laws.
Since the incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Empire the main center of the Qarays is the city of Eupatoria.
[edit] During the Holocaust Their status under Russian imperial rule bore beneficial fruits for the Karaims decades later. In 1934, the heads of the Karaite community in Berlin asked the Nazi authorities to exempt them from the regulations; on the basis of their legal status in Russia. The Reich Agency for the Investigation of Families determined that from the standpoint of German law, the Karaites were not to be considered Jews. The letter from the Reichsstelle fur Sippenforschung gave the official ruling in a letter which stated:
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 Citizenship Law. "However, it cannot be established that Karaites in their entirety are of blood-related stock, for the racial categorization of an individual cannot be determined without ... his personal ancestry and racial biological characteristics"[4] This ruling set the tone for how the Nazis dealt with the Karaite community in Eastern Europe.
At the same time, the Nazis had serious reservations towards the Karaites. SS Obergruppenfuhrer Gottlob Berger wrote on November 24, 1944:
Their Mosaic religion is unwelcome. However, on grounds of race, language and religious dogma... Discrimination against the Karaites is unacceptable, in consideration of their racial kinsmen [Berger was here referring to the Crimean Tatars]. However, so as not to infringe the unified anti-Jewish orientation of the nations led by Germany, it is suggested that this small group be given the opportunity of a separate existence (for example, as a closed construction or labor battalion)...
Despite their exempt status, confusion led to initial massacres. German soldiers who came across Karaims in Russia during the initial phase of Operation Barbarossa, not aware of their legal status under German law, attacked them; 200 were killed at Babi Yar alone. German allies such as the Vichy Republic began to require the Karaites to register as Jews, but eventually granted them non-Jewish status upon being instructed by Berlin.[5]
On interrogation, Ashkenazi and Krymchak rabbis in Crimea told the Germans that the Karaims were not Jews, in an effort to spare the Karaite community the fate of their Rabbanite neighbors.[6] The record of the Karaite community during the war is a checkered one; while many Karaims risked their lives to hide Jews, and in some cases claimed that Jews were members of their community, others joined German auxiliary units such as the Tatar Legion, Ostturkische Waffenverband, an SS unit that included Crimean Tatars and other Turkic peoples. According to a letter of September 27 1944, penned by Chancellor Gerhard Klopfer, an estimated 500-600 Crimean Karaims were fighting in the Wehrmacht, Waffen SS and Tatar Legion. Klopfer asked that until such a time as the exact racial origin of the Karaites could be determined, a list of all members of the sect be diligently kept. Many of the Karaims were recruited for labor battalions.[7]
In Lutsk the Karaims generally cooperated with the Nazi anti-Jewish activities. In Vilna and Troki Karaite Hakham Seraya Shapshal gave precise lists of the members of their community, allowing the Nazis to quickly discover Jews bearing false Karaite papers. The historian W.P. Green describes the situation in Lutsk thus:
[T]he local Karaites acted as liaisons between the Germans and the Lutsk Judenrat. Jacob Eilbert, a survivor of the Lutsk Ghetto, testified to the Karaite anti-Jewish activity. He recounted that the Karaites would enter the ghetto and beat up women and children. On other occasions they would extort huge sums of money from the Lutsk Judenrat. Eilbert also testified to the fact that the Karaites assisted the Germans and Ukrainians in the liquidation of the Lutsk Ghetto in August 1942. My research, however, indicates that the strained Karaite-Jewish relations described by Eilbert appear to be an exception.[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Karaites
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