Karaites and dejudaization

Discusses the position of the Karaites in Judaism; what began as a purely religious feud turned into an intratribal split. Ch. 14 (pp. 84-96), "Karaites and the Brown Tide", deals with the Nazi period. States that the "January decree" (1939), in which the Reich Office for Racial Research recognized the Karaites as a religious community separate from the Jews (although not tantamount to an official recognition of racial distinction), saved the lives of most of the Eastern European Karaites. One notable exception is the murder of a group of Karaites at Babi Yar in September 1941 by Einsatzgruppe C. During the war, the Karaites denied their affiliation with Jewry, and Crimean Karaites participated in the German war machine. In France, discrimination against Karaites ended only in 1943. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)