Here is an essay that I wrote a while back that was never published because I guess it was too Jewish, or too historical, or Jewishly historical or something.
Well, now that I have my own damned site, I can publish whatever I want-whenever I want. I'm a history slut and I'm proud of it. I read history for breakfast lunch and dinner.
I will periodically post book reviews, or book suggestions because I try to read as much as I can. So please enjoy this essay as we approach Erev Purim (tomorrow is the big holiday). I'm blocking comments because trolls are exhausting and I couldn't care less what trolls think of me. If you have something to say, please e-mail me.
The “Secret”
War Against Jewish Artists in the Soviet Union
By Laura Rosen Cohen
In July 1948,
a popular Jewish actor in the Soviet Union’s thriving Yiddish cultural scene
died in what was officially claimed to be a traffic accident. But the suspicious and untimely death of Solomon
Mikhoels (Solomon Vovsi) was widely recognized at the time, in whispers, as the
end of the brief reprieve from officially sanctioned anti-Semitism that the
local Jewish community had enjoyed in the immediate post-WWII period.
It was the
beginning of a new wave of persecution directed by none other than Stalin
himself. Even as they faced sentences of
the death penalty for treason, the betrayal was ultimately incomprehensible to
communism’s many devoted Jewish adherents in the Soviet Union and their Jewish
sympathizers in North America.
Recently
declassified trial transcripts are a chilling window into the judicial workings
of totalitarian regimes, but also must be read and serve as warnings even to
democracies about the potential for abuse when power is too heavily
concentrated in any one area of government and rights are abused or ignored.
Many in the
western world are aware of the notorious 1952 “Doctor’s Plot” - the
anti-Semitic targeting and persecution of Jewish physicians in the Soviet Union
on fabricated charges– but fewer are aware that Stalin’s more aggressive
anti-Jewish activities began with a campaign against Jewish artists, writers, musicians,
actors and playwrights – all of whom earned their living courtesy of the state.
Recently
declassified and translated documents from the period demonstrate the
relentless, merciless campaign that Stalin waged against members of the
state-sanctioned and state-funded Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC). It has been suggested that Stalin planned to
use the doctor’s collective “guilt” in order to implement a large-scale
deportation of Jews to Birobidzhan (about 5,000 miles east of Moscow near the
border with China). However in life, as in everything – timing is
everything. Miraculously, some might
say, Stalin died suddenly before being able to give a deportation order.
JAC members,
like other ethnicity-based ‘anti-fascist’ committees, were created by Soviet
leaders for both surveillance and indoctrination purposes.
The role of
the JAC was unique in some ways, and the stakes higher for Stalin because
Soviet leaders realized that they could use JAC members for propaganda purposes
and to raise money – hard currency – for the Soviet Union from wealthy North
American Jews, all under the guise of ‘anti-fascist’ political activity.
Communist
Jews were seduced by JAC members, who talked about the glories of the American-Soviet
anti-Nazi wartime alliance, and spoke glowingly about new plans for a new
Jewish worker’s paradise in the east. Jews
of course has always longed for Zion, but Stalin promised Birobidzhan –so
Jewish communists dutifully adjusted their compasses and their sympathizers opened
their chequebooks.
The arrests of
the Jewish artists were swift and silent. People simply disappeared. But even
more sinister was the fact that Jewish communists in both the Soviet Union and
in North America continued to uphold the charade that they either hadn’t seen
their friends and comrades in some time, or didn’t know about their whereabouts
– all the while knowing that the regime was imprisoning and torturing their
Jewish brethren for the “crime” of being Jewish.
The artists,
who had been selected specifically for their JAC work because they were Jewish,
were now being persecuted for that very reason. They were accused of being
Jewish “nationalists”, “exceptionally nationalistic” or of cavorting with, or
spying for “bourgeois” nations and collaborating with both real and imagined
enemies of the Soviet regime. Their use of the Yiddish language, hitherto
sanctioned by Stalin in order to accelerate the assimilation of Jews, formed
the basis of the accusations of anti-Soviet “nationalistic” thought crimes.
The devoted
Jewish communists had been critical to the Soviet war effort. They produced
thousands of pages of foreign language propaganda, raised funds for, and served
in the Soviet army. Jewish soldiers
received the fourth highest number of medals for valour (after Russians,
Ukrainians and Belorussians) despite their small numbers relative to the greater
Soviet population. How could this be
happening, they wondered?
The artists,
musicians, writers, actors and essayists were tortured day and night and
subjected to relentless beatings. They were forced to sign confessions and
endure endless prosecutorial sessions in the effort to have them, through this
process, create self-incriminating “evidence” of their “crimes” when none (as
Stalin himself acknowledged) actually existed. Their devotion to the regime was
reciprocated with execution.
There was
much Jewish complicity in the silence about the “secret” pogrom against the
artists.
Word only really started to break of the multiple executions of Jews
in March 1956, only a few short weeks after Khrushchev “secret speech”
denouncing Stalin.
To this day,
there remain steadfast believers in the righteousness of the communist’s cause.
There is also no small number of citizens in various democratic countries who
wish to see extraordinary amounts of power concentrated in the hands of
government – which is ultimately a collection of ordinary people with whims and
faults, prejudices and opinions of their own.
Although the
reality of their plight faced them straight in the eye, many Soviet Jewish
communists and their sympathizers preferred to remain in denial – even
convincing themselves that they were in some way complicit in their “crimes”.
They refused to believe their lying eyes, and continued to collaborate passively
and actively with their eventual murderers.
Ultimately,
not only Jewish survival and security is imperiled by totalitarian
undercurrents – where the Jew goes, other cultures have fallen and followed. The lessons of the “secret” pogroms can therefore
be seen in historic and contemporary terms as well.
HAPPY PURIM!!!!
