200 years together 600-700

and before the arrival of Germans, there was an explosion of public outrage against the Jews. In the novel by D.P. Vitkovsky, Half-life, there is a phrase about the Jewish looks of investigator, Yakovlev (the action is set during Khrushchev’s  regime). Vitovsky put it rather harshly so that Jews, who by the end of the 1960s were already on the way of breaking away from communism and in their new political orientation developed sympathy to any camp memoirs, were nonetheless repulsed by such a description. I remember V. Gershuni asked me how many other Jewish investigators did Vitovsky come across during his 30year-long ordeal? What an astonishing forgetfulness betrayed by that rather innocent slip! Would not it have been more appropriate to mention not the “30 years” but 50 years, or, at least, 40 years? Indeed, Vitovsky might not have encountered many Jewish investigators during his last thirty years, from the end of the 1930s (though they could still be found around even in the 1960s). Yet Vitovsky was persecuted by the Organs for forty years; he survived the Solovki camp; and he apparently did not forget the time when a Russian investigator was a less frequent sight than a Jewish or a Latvian one. Nevertheless, Gershuni was right in implying that all these outstanding and not so outstanding posts were fraught with death for their occupants; the more so, the closer it was to 1937-38.
Our arbiters confidently ruled from their heights and when they were suddenly delivered a blow, it must have seemed to them like the collapse of the universe, like the end of the world. Wasn’t there anyone among them before the onslaught who reflected on the usual fate of revolutionaries? Among the major communist functionaries who perished in 1937-38, the Jews comprise an enormous percentage. For example, a modern historian writes that if “from 1 January 1935 to 1 January 1938 the members of this nationality headed more than 50% of the main structural units of the central apparatus of the people’s commissariat of internal affairs, then by 1 January 1939 they headed only 6%.”2449 Using numerous “execution lists” that were published over the recent decades, and the biographical tomes of the modern Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, we are able to trace to some degree the fates of those outstanding and powerful Chekists, Red commanders, Soviet party officials, diplomats, and others, whom we mentioned in the previous chapters of this book. Among the Chekists the destruction was particularly overwhelming (the names of those executed are italicized):
2449G.V. Kostirchenko. Taynaya politika Stalina: Vlast i antisemitizm [Stalin’s Secret Policy: Power and Anti-semitism]. Moscow: Mezhdunarodnie otnosheniya [International Relations], 2001, p. 210.
G.Ya. Abrampolsky; L.M. Abramson, died in prison in 1939; Yakov Agranov, 1938;2450 Abram Belenky, 1941; Lev Belsky-Levin, 1941; Matvey Berman, 1939; Boris Berman, 1939; Iosif Blat, 1937; Ya. Veinshtok, 1939; Leonid Vul, 1938, Mark Gai-Shtoklyand, 1937; Semyon Gendin, 1939; Benjamin Gerson, 1941; Lev Zadov-Zinkovsky, 1938; Lev Zalin-Levin, 1940; A. Zalpeter, 1939; Lev Zakharov-Meyer, 1937; N.Zelikman, 1937; Aleksandr Ioselevich, 1937, Zinovy Katsnelson, 1938; Lazar Kogan, 1939; Mikhail Koltsov-Fridlyand, 1940; Georg Krukovsky, 1938; Izrail Leplevsky, 1938; Natan Margolin, 1938; A. Minaev-Tsikanovsky, 1939; Lev Mironov-Kagan, 1938; Sergey Mironov-Korol, 1940; Karl Pauker, 1937; Izrail Pliner, 1939; Mikhail Raev-Kaminsky, 1939; Aleksandr Radzivilovsky, 1940; Naum RayskyLekhtman, 1939; Grigoriy Rappoport, 1938; Ilya Ressin, 1940; A. Rutkovsky; Pinkhus Simanovsky, 1940; Abram Slutsky, poisoned in 1938; David Sokolinsky, 1940; Mikhail Trilisser; Leonid Fayvilovich, 1936; Vladimir Tsesarsky, 1940; A. Shanin, 1937; Isaak Shapiro, 1940; Evsey Shirvindt, 1938; Grigoriy Shklyar; Sergey Shpigelglas, 1940; Genrikh Yagoda, 1938. Nowadays entire directories, containing lists of the highest officials of the Central Apparatus of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD who fell during the Ezhov’s period of executions and repressions, are published. There we see many more Jewish names.2451 But only accidentally, thanks to the still unbridled glasnost that began in the beginning of the 1990s, we learn about several mysterious biographies formerly shrouded in secrecy. For example, from 1937, professor Grigory Mayranovsky, a specialist in poisons, headed the “Laboratory X” in the Special Section of Operations Technology of the NKVD, which carried out death sentences through injections with poisons by “the direct decision of the government in 1937-47 and in 1950”; the executions were performed in a special prisoner cell at “Laboratory X” as well as abroad even in the 1960s and 1970s.2452 Mayranovsky was arrested only in 1951; from his cell he wrote to Beria: “Dozens of sworn enemies of the Soviet Union, including all kinds of nationalists, were destroyed by my hand.”2453 And from the astonishing disclosure in 1990 we learned that the famous mobile gas chambers were invented, as it turns out, not by Hitler during the World War II, but in the Soviet NKVD in 1937 by Isai Davidovich Berg, the head of the administrative and maintenance section of the NKVD of Moscow Oblast (sure, he was not alone in
2450The names of those executed and the year of execution are italicized throughout the text; in other instances the date indicates the year of arrest; those who committed suicide on the eve of arrest and those who died in custody are mentioned specifically. 2451See for example: NV. Petrov, K.V. Skorkin. Kto rukovodil NKVD: 1934-1941: Spravochnik [Who Ran the NKVD: 1934-1941. Information Book]. Moscow: Zvenya, 1999. 2452Pavel Sudoplatov. Spetsoperatsii: Lubyanka i Kreml: 1930s-1950s [Special Operations: Lubyanka [Prison] and the Kremlin: the 1930s through the 1950s]. Moscow: OLMA-Press, 1997, p. 440-441. 2453Izvestiya, May 16, 1992 p. 6.
that enterprise, but he organized the whole business). This is why it is also important to know who occupied middle-level posts. It turns out, that I.D. Berg was entrusted with carrying out the sentences of the “troika” of the NKVD of Moscow Oblast; he dutifully performed his mission, which involved shuttling prisoners to the execution place. But when three “troikas” began to work simultaneously in the Moscow Oblast, the executioners became unable to cope with the sheer number of executions. Then they invented a time-saving method: the victims were stripped naked, tied, mouths plugged, and thrown into a closed truck, outwardly disguised as a bread truck. On the road the exhaust fumes were redirected into the prisoner-carrying compartment, and by the time the van arrived to the burial ditch, the prisoners were “ready.” (Well, Berg himself was shot in 1939, not for those evil deeds, of course, but for “the anti-Soviet conspiracy”. In 1956 he was rehabilitated without any problem, though the story of his murderous invention was kept preserved and protected in the records of his case and only recently discovered by journalists)2454 There are so many individuals with outstanding lives and careers in the list above! Bela Kun, the Butcher of Crimea, himself fell at that time, and with him the lives of twelve Commissars of the communist government of Budapest ended.2455 However, it would be inappropriate to consider the expulsion of Jews from the punitive organs as a form of persecution. There was no anti-Jewish motif in those events. (Notwithstanding, that if Stalin’s praetorians valued not only their present benefits and power but also the opinion of the people whom they governed, they should have left the NKVD and not have waited until they were kicked out. Still, this wouldn’t have spared many of them death, but surely it would have spared them the stigma?) The notion of purposeful anti-Jewish purge doesn’t hold water: “according to available data, at the end of the 1930s the Jews were one of the few national minorities, belonging to which did not constitute a “crime” for an NKVD official. There were still no regulations on national and personnel policy in the state security agencies that was enforced … from the end of the 1940s to the early 1950s”2456
Many Party activists fell under the destructive wave of 1937-1938. From 1936-37 the composition of the Soviet of People’s Commissars began to change noticeably as the purges during the pre-war years ran through the prominent figures in the people’s commissariats. The main personage behind collectivization, Yakovlev, had met his bullet; the same happened to his 2454E. Zhirnov. “Protsedura kazni nosila omerzitelniy kharakter” [A Horrible Execution] // Komsomolskaya Pravda, October 28, 1990, p. 2. 2455Robert Conquest. Bolshoy Terror [The Great Terror], p. 797-798. 2456L.Yu. Krichevsky. Evrei v apparate VChK-OGPU v 20-e gody [The Jews in the apparatus of the Cheka-OGPU in the 1920s] // Evrei i russkaya revolyutsia: Materiali i issledovaniya [Jews and the Russian Revolution], p. 343, 344.
comrades-in-arms, Kalmanovich and Rukhimovich, and many others. The meatgrinder devoured many old “honored” Bolsheviks, such as the long-retired Ryazanov or the organizer of the murder of the Tsar Goloshchekin, not to mention Kamenev and Zinovyev. (Lazar Kaganovich was spared although, he himself was the “iron broom” in several purges during 1937-38; for example, they called his swift purge of the city of Ivanov the “Black Tornado.”)2457 They offer us the following interpretation: “This is a question about the victims of the Soviet dictatorship; they were used by it and then mercilessly discarded when their services became redundant.”2458 What a great argument! So for twenty years these powerful Jews were really used? Yet weren’t they themselves the zealous cogs in the mechanism of that very dictatorship right up to the very time when their “services became redundant”? Did not they make the great contribution to the destruction of religion and culture, the intelligentsia, and the multi-million peasantry? A great many Red Army commanders fell under the axe. “By the summer of 1938 without exception all… commanders of military districts … who occupied these posts by June 1937 disappeared without a trace.” The Political Administration of the Red Army “suffered the highest losses from the terror” during the massacre of 1937, after the suicide of Gamarnik. Of the highest political officers of the Red Army, death claimed all 17 army commissars, 25 out of 28 corps commissars, and 34 out of 36 brigade (divisional) commissars.2459 We see a significant percentage of Jews in the now-published lists of military chiefs executed in 1937-38.2460 Grigory Shtern had a very special military career; he advanced along the political officer’s  path. During the Civil War he was military commissar at regimental, brigade, and divisional levels. In 1923-25 he was the head of all special detachments in the Khorezm [a short-lived republic after the Bolshevik revolution] troops during the suppression of rebellions in Central Asia. Until 1926, he was the head of the political administration division. Later he studied at the military academy for senior military officers [and thus became eligible for proper military posts]; in 1929-34 he was a “military advisor to the Republican government in Spain” (not to be confused with Manfred Shtern, who also distinguished himself among the Red Spaniards under the alias of “General Kleber”). Later he was the Chief of Staff of the Far Eastern Front and conducted bloody battles at Lake Khasan in 1938 together with Mekhlis, at the same time conspiring against Marshall Blücher, whom he ruined and whose post of the front commander he took over after the arrest of the latter. In March 1939, at the 18th Party Congress, he made this speech: “Together we have destroyed a bunch of good-for-nothings— the Tukhachevskys, Gamarniks, Uborevichs [former 2457Robert Conquest. Bolshoy Terror [The Great Terror], p. 459. 2458Yu. Margolin. Tel-Avivskiy bloknot [Tel-Aviv Notebook] // Novoe Russkoe Slovo [The New Russian Word], New York, August 5, 1968. 2459Robert Conquest. Bolshoy Terror [The Great Terror], p. 427-428, 430. 2460See for example: O.F. Suvenirov. Tragediya RKKA: 1937-1938. [The Tragedy of the Red Army: 1937-1938] Moscow, Terra, 1998.
Soviet Marshalls[ and similar others.” Well, he himself was shot later, in autumn 1941.2461 Shtern’s comrade-in-arms in aviation, Yakov Smushkevich, also had a head-spinning career. He too began as a political officer (until the mid-1930s); then he studied at the academy for top officers. In 1936-37 he had also fought in Spain, in aviation, and was known as “General Douglas”. In 1939 he was commander of the aviation group at Khalkhin Gol [on the ManchurianMongolian border, site of Soviet-Japanese battles won by the Russians]. After that he rose to the commander of all air forces of the Red Army – the General Inspector of the Air Force; he was arrested in May 1941 and executed in the same year.2462 The wave of terror spared neither administrators, nor diplomats; almost all of the diplomats mentioned above were executed. Let’s name those party, military, diplomatic, and managerial figures whom we mentioned before on these pages who now were persecuted (the names of the executed are italicized): Samuil Agursky, arrested in 1938; Lazar Aronshtam, 1938; Boris Belenky, 1938; Grigory Belenky, 1938; Zakhar Belenky,1940;  Mark Belenky, 1938; Moris Belotsky, 1938; German Bitker, 1937; Aron Vainshtein, 1938; Yakov Vesnik, 1938; Izrail Veitser, 1938; Abram Volpe, 1937; Yan Gamarnik, committed suicide in 1937; Mikhail Gerchikov, 1937; Evgeny Gnedin, arrested in 1939; Philip Goloshchekin, 1941; Ya. Goldin, 1938; Lev Gordon, arrested in 1939; Isaak Grinberg, 1938; Yakov Gugel, 1937; Aleksandr Gurevich, 1937; Sholom Dvoilatsky, 1937; Maks Deych, 1937; Semyon Dimanshtein, 1938; Efim Dreitser, 1936; Semyon Zhukovsky, 1940; Samuil Zaks, 1937; Zinovy Zangvil, Isaak Zelensky, 1938; Grigory Zinovyev, 1936; S. Zorin-Gomberg, 1937; Boris Ippo, 1937; Mikhail Kaganovich, committed suicide in expectation of arrest, 1941; Moisey Kalmanovich, 1937; Lev Kamenev, 1936; Abram Kamensky, 1938; Grigoriy Kaminsky, 1938; Ilya Kit-Viytenko, arrested in 1937 and spent 20 years in camps; I.M. Kleiner, 1937; Evgeniya Kogan, 1938; Aleksandr Krasnoshchyokov-Tobinson, 1937; Lev Kritsman, 1937; Solomon Kruglikov, 1938; Vladimir Lazarevich, 1938; Mikhail Landa, 1938; Ruvim Levin, 1937; Yakov Livshits, 1937; Moisey Lisovsky, arrested in 1938; Frid Markus, 1938; Lev Maryasin, 1938; Grigory Melnichansky, 1937; Aleksandr Minkin-Menson, died in camp in 1955; Nadezhda Ostrovskaya, 1937; Lev Pechersky, 1937; I. Pinson, 1936; Iosif Pyatnitsky-Tarshis, 1938; Izrail Razgon, 1937; Moisey Rafes, 1942; Grigory Roginsky, 1939; Marsel Rozenberg, 1938; Arkady Rozengolts, 1938; Naum Rozovsky, 1942; Boris Royzenman, 1938; E. Rubinin, spent 15 years in camps; Yakov Rubinov, 1937; Moisey Rukhimovich, 1938; Oskar Ryvkin, 1937; David Ryazanov, 1938; Veniamin Sverdlov, 1939; Boris Skvirsky, 1941; Iosif Slavin, 1938; Grigoriy Sokolnikov-Brilliant, killed in 2461RJE, v. 3, p. 430. See also Aron Abramovich. V reshayushchey voyne. [In the Deciding War], v. 1, p. 66.  See also V. Katuntsev, I. Kots. Intsident: Podopleyka Khasanskikh sobitiy [The Incident: the Causes of the Lake Khasan Conflict] // Rodina, 1991, (6), p. 17. 2462RJE, v. 3, p. 82. See also Aron Abramovich, V reshayushchey voyne. [In the Deciding War] v. 1, p. 64-66.
prison, 1939; Isaak Solts, died in confinement in 1940; Naum Sokrin, 1938; Lev Sosnovsky, 1937; Artur Stashevsky-Girshfeld, 1937; Yury Steklov-Nakhamkis, 1941; Nikolay Sukhanov-Gimmer, 1940; Boris Tal, 1938; Semyon Turovsky, 1936; Semyon Uritsky, 1937; Evgeny Fainberg, 1937; Vladimir Feigin, 1937; Boris Feldman, 1937; Yakov Fishman, arrested in 1937; Moisey Frumkin, 1938; Maria Frumkina-Ester, died in camp, 1943; Leon Khaikis, 1938; Avenir Khanukaev; Moisey Kharitonov, died in camp, 1948; Mendel Khataevich, 1937; Tikhon Khvesin, 1938; Iosif Khodorovsky, 1938; Mordukh Khorosh, 1937; Isay Tsalkovich, arrested in 1937; Efim Tsetlin, 1937; Yakov Chubin; N. Chuzhak-Nasimovich; Lazar Shatskin, 1937; Akhiy Shilman, 1937; Ierokhim Epshtein, arrested in 1938; Iona Yakir, 1937; Yakov Yakovlev-Epshtein, 1938; Grigory Shtern, 1941. This is indeed a commemoration roster of many top-placed Jews. Below are the fates of some prominent Russian Jewish socialists, who did not join the Bolsheviks or who even struggled against them. Boris Osipovich Bogdanov (born 1884) was an Odessan, the grandson and son of lumber suppliers. He graduated from the best commerce school in Odessa. While studying, he joined Social Democrat societies. In June 1905, he was the first civilian who got on board the mutinous battleship, Potemkin, when she entered the port of Odessa; he gave a speech for her crew, urging sailors to join Odessa’s labor strike; he delivered letters with appeals to consulates of the European powers in Russia. He avoided punishment by departing for St. Petersburg where he worked in the Social Democratic underground; he was a Menshevik. He was sentenced to two 2-year-long exiles, one after another, to Solvychegodsk and to Vologda. Before the war, he entered the elite of the Menshevik movement; he worked legally on labor questions. In 1915 he became the secretary of the Labor Group at the Military Industrial Committee, was arrested in January 1917 and freed by the February Revolution. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies of Petrograd, and regularly chaired its noisy sessions which attracted thousands of people. From June 1917 he was a member of the Bureau of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and persistently opposed ongoing attempts of the Bolsheviks to seize power. After the failed Bolshevik rebellion in July 1917 he accepted the surrender of the squad of sailors besieged in the Petropavlovsk Fortress. After the October coup, in 1918 he was one of the organizers of anti-Bolshevik workers movement in Petrograd. During the Civil War he lived in Odessa. After the Civil War he tried to restart the Menshevik political activity, but at the end of 1920 he was arrested for one year. That was the beginning of many years of unceasing arrests and sentences, exiles and camps, and numerous transfers between different camps — the so-called “Great Road” of so many socialists in the USSR. And all that was just for being a Menshevik in the past and for having Menshevik convictions even though by that time he no longer engaged in politics and during brief respites simply worked on economic posts and just wanted a quiet life; however, he was
suspected of economic “sabotage.” In 1922 he requested permission to emigrate, but shortly before departure was arrested again. First he was sent to the Solovki prison camp and later exiled to the Pechora camp [in the Urals]; his sentences were repeatedly extended by three years; he experienced solitary confinement in the Suzdal camp and was repeatedly exiled. In 1931 they attempted to incriminate him in the case of the “All-Soviet Bureau of Mensheviks,” but he was lucky and they left him alone. Yet he was hauled in again in 1937, imprisoned in the Omsk jail (together with already-imprisoned communists), where he survived non-stop interrogations which sometimes continued without a pause for weeks, at any time of the day or night (there were three shifts of investigators); he served out 7 years in the Kargopol camp (several other Mensheviks were shot there); later he was exiled to Syktyvkar; in 1948 he was again sentenced and exiled to Kazakhstan. In 1956 he was rehabilitated; he died in 1960, a worn-out old man. Boris Davidovich Kamkov-Kats (born 1885) was the son of a country doctor. From adolescence, he was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Exiled in 1905 to the Turukhan Krai, he escaped. Abroad, he graduated from the Heidelberg University School of Law. He was a participant in the Zimmerwald [Switzerland] Conference of socialists (1915). After the February Revolution he returned to Russia. He was one of the founders of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party; at the time of the October coup he entered into a coalition with the Bolsheviks. He took part in the dispersal of the Russian Constituent Assembly in January 1918. From April he urged breaking the alliance with the Bolsheviks; in June he already urged “a revolutionary uprising against them. After the failed rebellion of the Socialist Revolutionaries, he went underground. After a brief arrest in 1920, he was arrested again in 1921, and exiled in 1923. Between exiles he spent two years in prison and experienced the same “Great Road.” In 1933 he was exiled to Archangel; he was arrested again in 1937 and executed in 1938. Abram Rafailovich Gots (born 1882) was the grandson of a millionaire tea merchant, V.Ya. Visotsky. From the age of 14, he was in the the Socialist Revolutionary movement from the very creation of the SR party in 1901 (his brother Mikhail was the party leader). From 1906, he was a terrorist, a member of the militant wing of the SRs. From 1907-1915 he was in hard labor camps; he spent some time sitting in the infamous Aleksandrovsky Central. He was a participant of the February Revolution in Irkutsk and later in Petrograd. He was a member of the executive committees of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies of Petrograd and of the Soviet Peasant’s Deputies and a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. From 25 October 1917 he headed the anti-Bolshevik Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland and Revolution. During the Civil War he continued his struggle against Bolsheviks. In 1920 he was arrested; at the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries in 1922 he was sentenced to death, commuted to 5 years of imprisonment. Later he experienced the “Great Road” of endless new prison
terms and exiles. In 1939 he was sentenced to 25 years in the camps and died in one a year later. Mikhail Yakovlevich Gendelman (born 1881) was an attorney-at-law and a Socialist Revolutionary from 1902. He participated in the February Revolution in Moscow, was a member of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies, a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. On 25 October 1917, he left the meeting of the 2nd All-Russian Congress of the Soviets in protest against the Bolsheviks. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly and participated in its only session, on 5 January 1918. Later in Samara he participated in the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assemby. He was arrested in 1921; in 1922 he was sentenced to death at the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, commuted to 5 years in prison. After numerous prison terms and exiles, he was shot in 1938. Mikhail Isaakovich Liber-Goldman (born 1880) was one of the founders of the Bund (1897), a member of the Central Committee of the [General Jewish Labor] Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia in Emigration; he represented the Bund at the congresses of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. He participated in the revolution of 1905-06. In 1910 he was exiled for three years to Vologda Province, fled soon thereafter and emigrated again. He was a steady and uncompromising opponent of Lenin. He returned to Russia after 1914, and joined the Socialist “Defender” movement (“Defense of the Motherland in War”). After the February revolution, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Soldiers’ and Workers’ Deputies, and later he was a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. (He left the latter post after the October coup). Then he briefly participated in the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of the Mensheviks. He worked on economic positions andwas one of the leaders of the Menshevik underground in the USSR. His “Great Road” arrests and exiles began in1923. He was arrested again and executed in Alma-Ata in 1937. For many, there was a similar fate, with repeated sentences and exiles, right up to the climax of 1937-38. Yet in those years purges swept all over the country, destroying the lives of countless ordinary people, including Jews, people who had nothing to do with politics or authority. Here are some of the Jews who perished: Nathan Bernshtein (born 1876) a music scholar and critic; he taught the history of music and aesthetics and wrote a number of books; arrested in 1937, he died in prison. Matvei Bronshtein (born 1906) a talented theoretical physicist, Doctor of Science, who achieved extraordinary results. He was the husband of Lyudmila K. Chukovskaya. Arrested in 1937, he was executed in 1938. Sergey Ginter (born 1870) an architect and engineer; arrested in 1934, exiled to Siberia, arrested again in 1937 and executed.
Veniamin Zilbermints (born 1887) a mineralogist and geochemist; specialist on rare elements, he laid the foundation for semi-conductor science; he was persecuted in 1938. Mikhail Kokin (born 1906) an Orientalist, Sinologist and historian, arrested in 1937 and executed. Ilya Krichevsky (born 1885) a microbiologist, immunologist (also trained in physics and mathematics), Doctor of Medical Sciences, founder of a scientific school, chairman of the National Association of Microbiologists; arrested in 1938 and died in 1943. Solomon Levit (born 1894), geneticist; he studied the role of heredity and environment in pathology. Arrested in 1938 and died in prison. Iokhiel Ravrebe (born 1883), an Orientalist,  Judaist, one of the founders of the reestablished Jewish Ethnographic Society in 1920. Accused of creating a Zionist organization, he was arrested in 1937 and died in prison. Vladimir Finkelshtein (born 1896), a chemical physicist, professor, corresponding member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences; he had many works in applied electrical chemistry; persecuted in 1937. Ilya Khetsrov (born 1887), a hygienist and epidemiologist; he studied environmental hygiene, protection of water resources, and community hygiene. Arrested in 1938 and executed. Nakhum Schwartz (born 1888), a psychiatrist, studied Jewish psychology. In 1921-23 he taught Hebrew and wrote poetry in Hebrew. Accused of Zionist activity, he was arrested in 1937 and later died in prison. Here are the fates of the three brothers Shpilrein from Rostov-on-Don. Jan (born 1887) was a mathematician; he applied mathematical methods in electrical and heat engineering, he was professor at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University and later the dean of its Electrical Engineering Department. He was persecuted and died in 1937. Isaak (born 1891) was a psychologist, Doctor of Philosophy. In 1927 he became the head of the AllRussian Society of Psychotechnology and Applied Psychophysiology; he performed extensive psychological analysis of professions and optimization of working environment. He was arrested in 1935 and later executed. Emil (born 1899) was a biologist, the dean of the Biology Department of Rostov University. He was shot in 1937. Leonid Yurovsky (born 1884) Doctor of Political Economy, one of the authors of the monetary reform of 1922-24.  A close friend to A.V. Chayanov and N.D. Kondratev [prominent Russian scientists], he was arrested in 1930, freed in 1935, then arrested again in 1937 and executed.
Despite the overwhelming percentage of high-placed, “aristocratic” Jews, who fell under Stalin’s axe, the free Western press did not perceive the events as specifically the persecution of Jews: the Jews were massacred simply because
of their abundance in the top tiers of the Soviet hierarchy. Indeed, we read such a stipulation in the collection of works Evreysky Mir [The Jewish World] (1939): “No doubt that the Jews in the USSR have numerous opportunities, which they did not have before the revolution, and which they do not have even now in some democratic countries. They can become generals, ministers, diplomats, professors, the most high-ranking and the most servile aristocrats.” Opportunities but “in no way rights”, because of the absence of such rights, “Yakir, Garmanik, Yagoda, Zinovyev, Radek, Trotsky” and the rest fell from their heights and lost their very lives.”2463 Still, no nationality enjoyed such a right under the communist dictatorship; it was all about the ability to cling to power. The long-time devoted socialist, emigrant S. Ivanovich (S.O. Portugeis), admitted: “Under the Tsars, the Jews were indeed restricted in their ‘right of living’; yet their ‘right to live’ was incomparably greater then than under Bolshevism.” Indeed. However, at the same time, despite being perfectly aware of collectivization, he writes that the “awkward attempts to establish ‘socialism’ in Russia took the heaviest toll from the Jews”; that “the scorpions of Bolshevism did not attack any other people with such brutal force as they attacked Jews.”2464 Yet during the Great Plague of dekulakization, it was not thousands but millions of peasants who lost both their ‘right of living’ and the ‘right to live’. And yet all the Soviet pens (with so many Jews among them) kept complete silence about this cold-blooded destruction of the Russian peasantry. In unison with them, the entire West was silent. Could it be really out of the lack of knowledge? Or was it for the sake of protecting the Soviet regime? Or was it simply because of indifference? Why, this is almost inconceivable: 15 million peasants were not simply deprived of entering the institutes of higher learning or of the right to study in graduate school, or to occupy nice posts — no! They were dispossessed and driven like cattle out of their homes and sent to certain death in the taiga and tundra. And the Jews, among other passionate urban activists, enthusiastically took the reins of the collectivization into their hands, leaving behind them persistent evil memory. And who had raised their voices in defense of the peasants then? And now, in 1932-33, in Russia and Ukraine – on the very outskirts of Europe, five to six million people died from hunger! And the free press of the free world maintained utter silence… And even if we take into account the extreme Leftist bias of the contemporary Western press and its devotion to the socialist “experiment” in the USSR, it is still impossible not to be amazed at the degree to which they could go to be blind and insensitive to the sufferings of even tens of millions of fellow humans. If you don’t see it, your heart doesn’t cry. 2463St. Ivanovich. Evrei i sovetskaya diktatura [The Jews and the Soviet Dictatorship] // Evreyskiy Mir: Ezhegodnik na 1939 [Jewish World: Yearbook for 1939]. (henceforth — JW-1). Paris: Obedinenie russko-evreyskoy intelligentsii [Association of the Russo-Jewish Intelligentsia], p. 43. 2464Ibid., p. 44-46.
During the 1920s, the Ukrainian Jews departed from their pro-Russianstatehood mood of 1917-1920, and by the end of the 1920s “the Jews are among Ukrainian chauvinists and separatists, wielding enormous influence there—but only in the cities.”2465 We can find such a conclusion: the destruction of Ukrainian-language culture in 1937 was in part aimed against Jews, who formed “a genuine union” with Ukrainians “for the development of local culture in Ukrainian language.”2466 Nevertheless, such a union in cultural circles could not soften the attitudes of the wider Ukrainian population toward Jews. We have already seen in the previous chapter how in the course of collectivization “a considerable number of Jewish communists functioned in rural locales as commanders and lords over life and death.”2467 This placed a new scar on Ukrainian-Jewish relations, already tense for centuries. And although the famine was a direct result of Stalin’s policy, and not only in Ukraine (it brutally swept across the Volga Region and the Urals), the suspicion widely arose among Ukrainians that the entire Ukrainian famine was the work of the Jews. Such an interpretation has long existed (and the Ukrainian émigré press adhered to it until the 1980s). “Some Ukrainians are convinced that 1933 was the revenge of the Jews for the times of Khmelnitsky.”2468 [A 17th century Cossack leader who conducted bloody anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine]. Don’t expect to reap wheat where the weed was sewn. The supreme authority of so many Jews along with only a small number of Jews being touched by the grievances which afflicted the rest of population could lead to all sorts of interpretations. Jewish authors who nervously kept an eye on anti-Semitism in the USSR did not notice this trampled ash, however, and made rather optimistic conclusions. For instance, Solomon Schwartz writes: “From the start of the 1930s, anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union quickly abated”, and “in the mid1930s it lost the character of a mass phenomenon …anti-Semitism reached the all-time low point.” He explains this, in part, as the result of the end of the NEP (the New Economic Policy) and thereby the disappearance of Jewish businessmen and petty Jewish merchants. Later, “forced industrialization and lightning-fast collectivization,” which he favorably compares with a kind of “shock therapy, i.e., treatment of mental disorders with electric shocks,” was of much help. In addition he considers that in those years the ruling communist circles began to struggle with Great-Russian “chauvinism.” (Well, they did not begin; they just continued the policy of Lenin’s intolerance). Schwartz soundly notes that the authorities were “persistently silent about anti-Semitism”, “in
2465Pismo V.I. Vernadskogo I.I. Petrunkevichu ot 14 Iyunya 1927 [A letter from V.I. Vernadsky to I.I. Petrunkevich of June 14, 1927] // Novy Mir [New World], 1989, (12), p. 220. 2466Mikhail Kheyfetz. Uroki proshlogo [Lessons of the Past] // “22”, 1989, (63), p. 202. 2467Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lügen: Russland und die Juden im 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1992, S. 84. 2468M. Tsarinnik. Ukrainsko-evreyskiy dialog [Ukraino-Jewish Dialogue] // “22”, 1984, (37), p. 160.
order to avoid the impression that the struggle against Great-Russian chauvinism is a struggle for the Jews.”2469 In January 1931, first the New York Times,2470 and later the entire world press published a sudden and ostentatious announcement by Stalin to the Jewish Telegraph Agency: “The Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot help but be an irreconcilable and sworn enemy of anti-Semitism. In the USSR, anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted by law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet order. Active anti-Semites are punished, according to the laws of the USSR, with the death penalty.”2471 See, he addressed the democratic West and did not mind specifying the punishment. And it was only one nationality in the USSR that was set apart by being granted such a protection. And world opinion was completely satisfied with that. But characteristically, the announcement by the Leader was not printed in the Soviet press (because of his cunning reservations); it was produced for export and he hid this position from his own citizens; in the USSR it was only printed at the end of 1936.2472 Then Stalin sent Molotov to make a similar announcement at the Congress of Soviets. A contemporary Jewish author, erroneously interpreting Molotov’s speech, suggests that  speaking on behalf of the government he threatened to punish “anti-Semitic feelings” with death.2473 Feelings! No, Molotov did not mention anything like that; he did not depart from Stalin’s policy of persecuting “active anti-Semites.” We are not aware of any instance of death penalty in the 1930s for anti-Semitism, but people were sentenced for it according to the Penal Code. (People whispered that before the revolution the authorities did not punish as harshly even for libels against the Tsar.) But now S. Schwartz observes a change: “In the second half of the 1930s, these sentiments [people’s hostility toward Jews] became much more prevalent … particularly in the major centers, where the Jewish intelligentsia and semiintelligentsia were concentrated…. Here again the legend about “Jewish domination” gradually began to come back to life, and they began to spread exaggerated notions about the role of Jews in the middle and top ranks of government.” Well, whether or not it was really a legend, he immediately attempted to explain it, though in a quite naïve manner, suggesting the same old excuse that the Jewish intelligentsia and semi-intelligentsia simply had almost no other source of livelihood  under Soviet conditions except the government service.”2474
2469S.M. Schwartz. Antisemitizm v Sovetskom Soyuze [Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union]. New York: Chekov’s Publishing House, 1952, p. 8, 98-99, 107-108. 2470New York Times, January 15, 1931, p. 9. 2471I.V. Stalin. Sochineniya (v 13 tomakh) [Written Works (in 13 volumes)]. M.: Gospolitizdat, 1946-1951. v. 13, p. 28. 2472Izvestiya, November 30, 1936, p. 2. 2473S. Pozner. Sovetskaya Rossiya [The Soviet Russia] // JW-1, p. 260. 2474S.M. Schwartz. Antisemitizm v Sovetskom Soyuze [Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union]. New York: Chekov’s Publishing House, 1952,p. 118.
This is so shameful to read. What oppression and despair! See, they had almost no other sources of livelihood, only privileged ones. And the rest of population was absolutely free to toil on kolkhoz fields, to dig pits, and to roll barrows at the great construction projects of the 5-year plans… In official policy, nothing had changed in the 1930s in the Jewish Question from the time of the revolution; no official hostility toward Jews existed. Indeed, they used to dream and proclaim about the impending end of all national conflicts. And the foreign Jewish circles did not and could not sense any oppression of the Jews in the USSR. In the article The Jews and the Soviet Dictatorship, S. Ivanovich wrote: “Abroad, many believe that there is no anti-Semitism in Russia, and on that basis they are favorably disposed toward the Soviet authorities. But in Russia they know that this is not true.” However, Jews “pray for the long-life of the Soviet regime … and are strongly afraid of its demise,” for “Stalin protects them from pogroms and hopefully would protect them in future.” The author sympathizes with such an opinion, although he considers it flawed: “If the Bolshevik dictatorship falls, no doubt there will be wild antiSemitic ravages and violence …The fall of the Soviet regime would be a catastrophe for the Jews, and any friend of the Jewish people should reject such a prospect with horror”; yet at the same time he remarks that “the Soviet dictatorship is already embarrassed by the Judeophilia and Jewish dominance attributed to it.”2475 The resolution on Stalin’s report at the 16th Party Congress provided the general political direction for the 1930s, calling for an energetic struggle against chauvinism, and primarily against the Great Russian chauvinism. The Party language was easily understood by all. And for several more years this struggle was enthusiastically carried on. Yet what kind of Stalinist madness was it? By that time there was no trace left of the Great Russian chauvinism. Stalin was not able to envision the immediate future [of WWII] – when only Russian patriotism would save him from imminent doom. Then they have already started to sound the alarm about the danger of any rebirth of Russian patriotism. In 1939, S. Ivanovich claimed to notice a trend “of this dictatorship returning to some national traditions of Moscovite  Russ and Imperial Russia”; he caustically cited several stamps that entered popular discourse around that time such as the “‘love for the Motherland’, ‘national pride’ etc.”2476 See, this is where the mortal danger for Russia lurked then, immediately before Hitler’s assault – in that ugly Russian patriotism! This alarm did not leave the minds of Jewish publicists for the next half century, even when they looked back at that war, when mass patriotism blazed up, at the war which saved Soviet Jewry. So in 1988 we read in an Israeli
2475St. Ivanovich. Evrei i Sovetskaya diktatura [The Jews and the Soviet Dictatorship] // JW-1, p. 50, 51, 52. 2476Ibid., p. 51-52.
magazine: “Vivid traditions of the Black Hundreds … were the foundation of ‘vivifying Soviet patriotism’, which blossomed later, during the Great Patriotic War”2477 [the official Russian designation for the Eastern front in WWII]. Looking back at that war of 1941-1945, let’s admit that this is a highly ungrateful judgment. So, even the purest and most immaculate Russian patriotism has no right to exist – not now, not ever? Why is it so? And why it is that Russian patriotism is thus singled out?
An important event in Jewish life in the USSR was the closing of the YevSek at the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1930. Though in accord with the Soviet blueprint, this act blocked any separate development of a Jewish society having “national, cultural, and individual Jewish autonomy.” From now on Jewish cultural development lay within the Soviet mainstream. In 1937-38 the leading Yevseks – Dimanshtein, Litvakov, Frumkina-Ester and their associates Motl Kiper, Itskhok Sudarsky, Aleksandr Chemerissky – who, in words of Yu. Margolina, “in the service of the authorities carried out the greatest pogrom against Jewish culture,”2478 were arrested and soon executed. Many Yevseks, “occupying governing positions in the central and local departments of the Society for Settling Toiling Jews on the Land (OZET) and in the Jewish community, Jewish cultural and educational structures,” also fell under the juggernaut. In 1936-39, the majority of them were persecuted.”2479 The poisonous atmosphere of 1930s now reached these levels too. During open public meetings they began to accuse and expose prominent Jewish communists, who at some time before were members either of the Bund or of the Zionist Socialist Party, or even of Poale-Zion, all of which were crippled under the Soviet regime. Was there anyone, whose past the Bolsheviks did not try to criminalize? “Who have you been before…?” In 1938 Der Emes was closed also. What about education? “Right up to 1933 the number of Jewish schools and Jewish students in them increased despite the early (1920s) critique  “of nationalistic over-zealousness”’ in the actions of the Yevseks on the ‘forced transition of Jewish education into Yiddish.’”2480 From 1936 to 1939 a “period of accelerated decline and even more accelerated inner impoverishment” of the schools in Yiddish was noted.2481 After 1936-37 “the number of Jewish schools
2477B. Orlov. Rossiya bez evreyev [Russia without Jews] // “22”, 1988, (60), p. 160. 2478Yu. Margolin. Tel-Avivskiy bloknot [Tel-Aviv Notebook] // Novoe Russkoe Slovo [The New Russian Word], New York, August 5, 1968. 2479SJE, v. 8, p. 167. 2480Ibid., p. 176. 2481Yu. Mark. Evreyskaya shkola v Sovetskom Soyuze [The Jewish School in the Soviet Union] // Kniga o russkom evreystve: 1917-1967 [The Book of Russian Jewry: 1917-1967 (henceforth — BRJ)]. New York: Association of Russian Jews, 1968, p. 239.
began to decline quickly even in Ukraine and Belorussia”; the desire of parents to send their children to such schools had diminished. “Education in Yiddish was seen as less and less prestigious; there was an effort to give children an education in the Russian language.” Also, from the second half of the 1930s the number of institutions of higher education lecturing in Yiddish began to decline rapidly”; “almost all Jewish institutions of higher education and technical schools were closed by 1937-38.”2482 At the start of 1930s the Jewish scientific institutes at the academies of science of Ukraine and Belorussia were closed; in Kiev ‘The Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture’ fell into desolation.” And soon after this arrests followed (Mikhail Kokin of the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy, literature and History was executed; Iokhiel Rabrebe, formerly of the Petrograd Institute of Higher Jewish Studies, who in the 1930s headed the Jewish Section of the Public Library, was sentenced to 8 years and died in the transit camp).2483 Persecutions spread to writers in Yiddish: Moyshe Kulbak was persecuted in 1937; Zelik Akselrod, in 1940; Abram Abchuk, a teacher of Yiddish and a critic, in 1937; writer Gertsl Bazov , was persecuted in 1938. Writer I. Kharik and critic Kh. Dunets were persecuted also. Still, “literature in Yiddish was actively published until the end of the 1930s. Jewish publishers were working in Moscow, Kiev, and Minsk.” Yet what kind of literature was it? In the 1930s “the overwhelming majority of works were written stereotypically, in accordance with the unshakable principles of ‘socialist realism.’”2484 Literature in Yiddish “from the 1930s up to June 1941 … was marked by the cult of Stalin. Unbridled flattery for Stalin flowed from the bosom of Jewish poetry…”2485 Itsik Feder “managed to light up even official propaganda with lyrical notes. These monstrous sayings are ascribed to his pen: ‘You betrayed your father — this is great!’, and ‘I say ‘Stalin’ but envision the sun.’”2486 Most of these writers, who zealously tried to please Stalin, were arrested ten years later. But some of them, as mentioned above, had already drawn this lot. Similarly, “the ideological press of official communist doctrine signified for many Jewish artists and sculptors a complete break up, quite often tragic, with the national Jewish traditions.” (Still, what culture in the USSR was not touched by this?) So it comes as little surprise that “the overwhelming majority … of Jewish theaters devoted much attention to propaganda performances.” This included all 19 aforementioned professional Yiddish theaters and “numerous independent collectives, studios, and circles.”2487
2482SJE, v. 8, p. 176, 177, 179. 2483RJE, v. 2, p. 58, 432. 2484SJE, v. 8, p. 179, 181. 2485Yu. Mark. Literatura na idish v Sovetskoy Rossii [Literature in Yiddish in Soviet Russia] // BRJ, p. 216. 2486Ibid., p. 230. 2487SJE, v. 8, p. 182-183.
Concerning Hebrew culture  which preserved the national traditions: it was by now conclusively banished and went underground. It has already been mentioned that the Zionist underground was crushed by the beginning of the 1930s. Many Zionists were already rounded up, but still many others were accused of “the Zionist conspiracy.” Take Pinkhas Dashevsky (from Chapter 8) – in 1933 he was arrested as a Zionist. Pinkhas Krasny was not a Zionist but was listed as such in his death sentence. He was former Minister of Petliura’s Directorate, emigrated but later returned into the USSR. He was executed in 1939. Volf Averbukh, a Poale-Zionist from his youth, left for Israel in 1922, where “he collaborated with the communist press.” In 1930, he was sent back to the USSR, where he was arrested.2488 “Most of the semi-legal cheder schools and yeshivas were shut down” around that time. Arrests rolled on from the late 1920s in the Hasidic underground. Yakov-Zakharia Maskalik was arrested in 1937, Abrom-Levik Slavin was arrested in 1939. By the end of 1933, “237 synagogues were closed, that is, 57% of all existing in the first years of Soviet authority … In the mid1930s, the closure of synagogues accelerated.” From 1929, “the authorities began to impose excessive tax on matzo baking.” In 1937, “the Commission on the Questions of Religions at the Central Executive Committee of the USSR prohibited baking matzo in Jewish religious communities.” In 1937-38 “the majority of clergy of the Jewish religious cult were persecuted. There were no rabbis in the majority of still-functioning synagogues.”2489 “In 1938 a ‘hostile rabbinical nest’ was discovered in the Moscow Central Synagogue; the rabbis and a number of parishioners were arrested.”2490 The Rabbi of Moscow, ShmuelLeib Medalia, was arrested and executed in 1938. (His son, Moishe Medalia, was arrested at the same time). In 1937, the Rabbi of Saratov, Iosif Bogatin, was arrested.2491 In the early 1930s, when the Jewish religion was restricted in the USSR, the closing of thousands of Orthodox Christian temples and the destruction of many of them rolled along throughout the entire country. They especially hurried to “liberate” Soviet Moscow from the church; Boris Iofan was in charge of that “reconstruction.” In that bitter and hungry year of devastating breakdown of the country, they promoted projects for a grand Palace of Soviets in place of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Izvestiya reports: “So far, eleven projects are presented at the exhibition. Particularly interesting among them are the works of architects Fridman, B. Iofan, Bronshtein, and Ladovsky.”2492 Later, the arrests reached the architects as well. The move toward ”settling the toiling Jews on the land” gradually became irrelevant for Soviet Jews. ”The percentage of Jewish settlers abandoning lands 2488RJE, v. 1, p. 15, 417; v. 2, p. 84. 2489SJE, v. 8, p. 198-199. 2490Gershon Svet. Evreiskaya religiya v Sovetskoy Rossii [The Jewish Religion in Soviet Russia] // BRJ, p. 209. 2491RJE, v. 1, p. 145; v. 2, p. 260. 2492Izvestiya, July 19, 1931, p. 2.
given to them remained high.” In 1930-32, the activity of foreign Jewish philanthropic organizations such as Agro-Joint, OKG, and EKO in the USSR, had noticeably decreased.” And although in 1933-38 it had still continued within the frameworks of new restrictive agreements, “in 1938 the activity ceased completely.” “In the first half of 1938, first the OZET and then the Committee for Settling the Toiling Jews on the Land (KomZET) were dissolved. The overwhelming majority of remaining associates of these organizations, who were still at liberty, were persecuted.” By 1939, “the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine decided to liquidate …’the artificially’ created national Jewish districts and boroughs.”2493 Nonetheless, the idea of a Jewish colony in Birobidzhan was not abandoned in the 1930s and was even actively advanced by government. In order to put spirit into the masses, the authorities staged the Second All-Union Congress of the OZET in Moscow in December 1930.2494 By the end of 1931, the general population of that oblast was 45,000 with only 5,000 Jews among them, although whole villages with homes were built for their settlement and access roads were laid (sometimes by inmates from the camps nearby; for example, the train station of Birobidzhan was constructed in this manner).2495 Yet non-Jewish colonization of the region went faster than Jewish colonization. In order to set matters right, in autumn of 1931 the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR decreed that another 25,000 Jews should be settled in Birobidzhan during the next two years, after which it would be possible to declare it the Jewish Autonomous Republic. However, in the following years the number of Jews who left exceeded the number of Jews arriving, and by the end of 1933, after six years of colonization, the number of settled Jews amounted only to 8,000; of them only 1,500 lived in rural areas, i.e. worked in kolkhozes; that is, the Jews comprised less than 1/5 of all kolkhoz workers there. (There is also information that the land in the Jewish kolkhozes was fairly often tilled by hired Cossacks and Koreans). The oblast could not even provide enough agricultural products for its own needs.2496 Nevertheless, in May 1934, when the non-Jewish population had already reached 50,000, Birobidzhan was loudly declared a Jewish Autonomous Oblast. (It still did not qualify for the status of a “republic.”) Thus, there was no “national enthusiasm among the Jewish masses, which would ease the overcoming of the enormous difficulties inherent in such colonization.” There was no industry in Birobidzhan, and “the economic and social structure” of the settlers “resembled that of contemporary Jewish towns and shtetls in Ukraine and Belorussia” This was particularly true for the city of Birobidzhan, especially considering ”the increased role of the Jews in the local administrative apparatus.”2497 2493SJE, v. 8, p. 173, 190, 193. 2494Izvestiya. December 12, 1930, p. 2. 2495S.M. Schwartz, Birobidjan // BRJ, p. 170-171, 200. 2496Ibid., p. 177-78. 2497S.M. Schwartz, Birobidjan // BRJ, p. 173, 180.
Culture in Yiddish had certainly developed in the autonomous oblast – there were Jewish newspapers, radio, schools, a theater named after Kaganovich (its director was the future author E. Kazakevich), a library named after Sholem Aleichem, a museum of Jewish culture, and public reading facilities. Perets Markish had published the exultant article, A People Reborn, in the central press.”2498 (In connection with Birobidzhan, let’s note the fate of the demographer Ilya Veitsblit. His position was that “the policy of recruitment of poor urban Jews in order to settle them in rural areas should end”; “there are no declassé individuals among the Jews, who could be suitable for Birobidzhan.” He was arrested in 1933 and likely died in prison).2499 Yet the central authorities believed that that the colonization should be stimulated even further; and from 1934 they began a near compulsory recruitment among Jewish artisans and workers in the western regions, that is, among the urban population without a slightest knowledge of agriculture. The slogan rang out: “The entire USSR builds the Jewish Autonomous Oblast!” – meaning that recruitment of non-Jewish cadres is needed for quicker development. The ardent Yevsek Dimanshtein wrote that “we do not aim to create a Jewish majority in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast as soon as possible; … this would contradict to the principles of internationalism.”2500 But despite all these measures, during the next three years only another 11,000 to eight or nine thousand Jews were added to those already living there; still, most of newcomers preferred to stay in the oblast capital closer to its railroad station and looked for opportunities to escape). Yet as we know, the Bolsheviks may not be defeated or dispirited. So, because of dissatisfaction with the KomZET, in 1936 the “Central Executive Committee of the USSR decided to partially delegate the overseeing of Jewish resettlement in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast to the resettlement department of the NKVD.”2501 In August of 1936, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR proclaimed that “for the first time in the history of the Jewish people, their ardent desire to have their own homeland has been realized and their own national statehood has been established.”2502 And now they began planning resettlement of 150,000 more Jews to Birobidzhan. Looking back at it, the Soviet efforts to convert the Jews to agriculture suffered the same defeat as the Tsarist efforts a century before. In the meantime, the year 1938 approached. KomZET was closed, OZET was disbanded, and the main Yevseks in Moscow and the administrators of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast were arrested. Those Birobidzhan Jews who could left for the cities of the Far East or for Moscow. According to the 1939 Census, the general population of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast consisted of 108,000 people; however, “the number of Jews there remained secret … the Jewish 2498Izvestiya, October 26, 1936, p. 3. 2499RJE, v. 1, p. 214. 2500S.M. Schwartz. Birobidjan // BRJ, p. 176. 2501SJE, v. 8, p. 190. 2502S.M. Schwartz. Birobidjan // BRJ, p. 177.
population of Birobidzhan was still low.” Presumably, eighteen Jewish kolkhozes still existed, of 40-50 families each,2503 but in those kolkhozes … they conversed and corresponded with the authorities in Russian. Yet what could Birobidzhan have become for Jews? Just forty-five years later, the Israeli General Beni Peled emphatically explained why neither Birobidzhan nor Uganda could give the Jewish people a sense of connection with the land: “I simply feel that I am not ready to die for a piece of land in Russia, Uganda, or New Jersey!…”2504 This sense of connection, after thousands of years of estrangement, was restored by Israel.
The migration of Jews to the major cities did not slow down in the 1930s. The Jewish Encyclopedia reports that, according to the Census of 1926, there were 131,000 Jews in Moscow; in 1933, there were 226,500; and in 1939, there were 250,000 Jews. “As a result of the massive resettlement of Ukrainian Jews, their share among Moscow Jewry increased to 80%.”2505 In the Book on the Russian Jewry (1968), we find that in the 1930s up to a half-million Jews “were counted among government workers, sometimes occupying prominent posts, primarily in the economy.”2506 (The author also reports, that in the 1930s “up to a halfmillion Jews became involved in industry, mainly in manual labor.” On the other hand, Larin provides another figure, that among the industrial workers there were only 2.7% Jews or 200,0002507 or 2.5 times less than the first estimate). “The flow of Jews into the ranks of office workers grew constantly. The reason for this was the mass migration to cities, and also the sharp increase of the educational level, especially of Jewish youth.”2508 The Jews predominantly lived in the major cities, did not experience artificial social restrictions, so familiar to their Russian peers, and, it needs to be said, they studied devotedly, thus preparing masses of technical cadres for the Soviet future. Let’s glance into statistical data: “in 1929 the Jews comprised 13.5% of all students in the higher educational institutions in the USSR; in 1933—12.2%; in 1936—13.3% of all students, and 18% of graduate students” (with their share of the total population being only 1.8%);2509 from 1928 to 1935, “the number of
2503Ibid., p. 178, 179. 2504Beni Peled. Mi ne mozhem zhdat eshcho dve tisyachi let! [We Cannot Wait Two Thousand Years More!] [Interview] // “22”, 1981, (17), p. 116. 2505SJE, v. 5, p. 477-478. 2506G. Aronson. Evreyskiy vopros v epokhu Stalina [The Jewish Question in the Stalin’s Era] // BRJ, p. 137 2507Yu. Larin. Evrei i anti-Semitism v SSSR [The Jews and Anti-Semitism in the USSR]. M.; L.: GIZ, 1929, p. 245. 2508SJE, v. 8, p. 190. 2509Ibid.
Jewish students per 1,000 of the Jewish population rose from 8.4 to 20.4 [while] per 1,000 Belorussians there were 2.4 students, and per 1,000 Ukrainians – 2.0”; and by 1935 “the percentage of Jewish students exceeded the percentage of Jews in the general population of the country by almost seven times, thus standing out from all other peoples of the Soviet Union.”2510 G.V. Kostirchenko, who researched Stalin’s policies on Jews, comments on the results of the 1939 census: “After all, Stalin could not disregard the fact that at the start of 1939 out of every 1,000 Jews, 268 had a high school education, and 57 out of 1,000 had higher education” (among Russians the figures were, respectively, 81 and 6 per 1,000).2511 It is no secret that “highly successful completion of higher education or doctoral studies allowed individuals to occupy socially-prestigious positions in the robustly developing Soviet economy of the 1930s.”2512 However, in The Book on Russian Jewry we find that “without exaggeration, after Ezhov’s purges, not a single prominent Jewish figure remained at liberty in Soviet Jewish society, journalism, culture, or even in the science.”2513 Well, it was absolutely not like that, and it is indeed a gross exaggeration. (Still, the same author, Grigory Aronson, in the same book, only two pages later says summarily about the 1930s, that “the Jews were not deprived of general civil rights … they continued to occupy posts in the state and party apparatus”, and “there were quite a few Jews … in the diplomatic corps, in the general staff of the army, and among the professors in the institutions of higher learning…Thus we enter into the year 1939.”2514 The voice of Moscow was that of the People’s Artist, Yury Levitan – “the voice of the USSR”, that incorruptible prophet of our Truth, the main host of the radio station of the Comintern and a favorite of Stalin. Entire generations grew up, listening to his voice: he read Stalin’s speeches and summaries of Sovinformburo [the Soviet Information Bureau], and the famous announcements about the beginning and the end of the war.2515 In 1936 Samuil Samosud became the main conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre and served on that post for many years. Mikhail Gnesin continued to produce music “in the style of modern European music and in the style of the so-called ‘New Jewish music’”; Gnesin’s sisters successfully ran the music school, which developed into the outstanding Musical Institute. The ballet of Aleksandr Krein was performed in the Mariinsky and Bolshoi theatres. Well, Krein distinguished himself by his symphony, Rhapsody, that is, a Stalin’s speech set to music. Krein’s brother and nephew flourished also.2516 A number
2510S. Pozner. Sovetskaya Rossiya [The Soviet Russia] // JW-1, p. 264. 2511G. Kostirchenko. Taynaya politika Stalina [The Secret Policy of Stalin], p. 198. 2512SJE, v. 8, p. 190. 2513G. Aronson. Evreyskiy vopros v epokhu Stalina [The Jewish Question in the Stalin’s Era] // BRJ, p. 138. 2514Ibid., p. 140-141. 2515RJE, v. 2, p. 150. 2516Gershon Svet. Evrei v russkoy muzikalnoy culture v sovetskiy period [The Jews in Russian Musical Culture in the Soviet Period] // BRJ, p. 256-262.
of brilliant musicians rose to national and later to international fame: Grigory Ginzburg, Emil Gilels, Yakov Zak, Lev Oborin, David Oistrakh, Yakov Flier and many others. Many established theatre directors, theatre and literary critics, and music scholars continued to work without hindrance. Examining the culture of the 1930s, it is impossible to miss the extraordinary achievements of the songwriter composers. Isaak Dunaevsky, “a founder of genres of operetta and mass song in Soviet music”, “composed easily digestible songs … routinely glorifying the Soviet way of life (The March of Merry Lads, 1933; The Song of Kakhovka, 1935; The Song about Homeland, 1936; The Song of Stalin, 1936, etc.). Official propaganda on the arts declared these songs … the embodiment of the thoughts and feelings of millions of Soviet people.”2517 Dunaevsky’s tunes were used as the identifying melody of Moscow Radio. He was heavily decorated for his service: he was the first of all composers to be awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and elected to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in the notorious year 1937. Later he was also awarded the Order of Lenin. He used to preach to composers that the Soviet people do not need symphonies.2518 Matvey Blanter and the brothers Daniil and Dmitry Pokrass were famous for their complacent hit song If War Strikes Tomorrow (“we will instantly crush the enemy”) and for their earlier hit the Budyonny March. There were many other famous Jewish songwriters and composers in 1930s and later: Oskar Feltsman, Solovyev-Sedoy, Ilya Frenkel, Mikhail Tanich, Igor Shaferan, Yan Frenkel and Vladimir Shainsky, etc. They enjoyed copy numbers in the millions, fame, royalties — come on, who dares to name those celebrities among the oppressed? And after all, alongside the skillfully written songs, how much blaring Soviet propaganda did they churn out, confusing, brainwashing, and deceiving the public and crippling good taste and feelings? What about movie industry? The modern Israeli Jewish Encyclopedia states that in the 1930s “the main role of movies was to glorify the successes of socialism; a movie’s entertainment value was minimal. Numerous Jewish filmmakers participated in the development of standards of a unified and openly ideological film industry, conservative in form and obsessively didactic. Many of them were already listed in the previous chapter; take, for example, D. Vertov’s Symphony of the Donbass, 1931, released immediately after the Industrial Party Trial. Here are a few of the then-celebrated names: F. Ermler (The Coming, The Great Citizen, Virgin Soil Upturned), S. Yutkevich (The Coming, The Miners), the famous Mikhail Romm (Lenin in October, Lenin in 1918), L. Arnshtam (Girlfriends, Friends), I. Trauberg (The Son of Mongolia, The Year 1919), A. Zarkhi and I. Kheifits (Hot Days, Ambassador of the Baltic).2519 Obviously, filmmakers were not persecuted in the 1930s, though
2517SJE, v. 2, p. 393-394. 2518Yuriy Elagin. Ukroshchenie iskusstv [Conquest of the Arts] / Introduction by M. Rostropovich. New York: Ermitazh, 1988, p. 340-345. 2519SJE, v. 4, p. 277.
many cinematography, production and film distribution managers were arrested; two high-ranking bosses of the central management of the cinema industry, B. Shumyatsky and S. Dukelsky, were even shot.2520 In the 1930s, Jews clearly comprised a majority among filmmakers. So, who was really the victim – deceived viewers, whose souls were steamrolled with lies and rude didactics, or the filmmakers, who “forged documentaries, biographies and produced pseudo-historical and essentially unimportant propaganda films,” characterized by “phony monumentality and inner emptiness”? The Jewish Encyclopedia adds sternly: “Huge numbers of Jewish operators and directors were engaged in making popular science, educational, and documentary films, in the most official sphere of the Soviet cinematography, where adroit editing helped to produce a “genuine documentary” out of a fraud. For example, R. Karmen, did it regularly without scruples.”2521 (He was a glorified Soviet director, producer of many documentaries about the civil war in Spain and the Nuremberg Trials; he made “the anniversary-glorifying film The Great Patriotic War”, Vietnam, and a film about Cuba; he was a recipient of three USSR State Prizes (the Stalin Prize) and the Lenin Prize; he held the titles of the People’s Artist of the USSR and the Hero of the Socialist Labor).2522 Let’s not forget filmmaker Konrad Wolf, the brother of the famous Soviet spy, Marcus Wolf.2523 No, the official Soviet atmosphere of 1930s was absolutely free of ill will toward Jews. And until the war, the overwhelming majority of Soviet Jewry sympathized with the Soviet ideology and sided with the Soviet regime. “There was no Jewish Question indeed in the USSR before the war – or almost none”; then the “open anti-Semites were not yet in charge of newspapers and journals … they did not control personnel departments”2524 (quite the opposite – many such positions were occupied by Jews). Sure, then Soviet “culture” consisted of “Soviet patriotism,” i.e., of producing art in accordance with directives from above. Unfortunately, many Jews were engaged in that pseudo-cultural sphere and some of them even rose to supervise the Russian language culture. In the early 1930s we see B.M. VolinFradkin at the head of the Main Administration for Literary and Publishing Affairs (GlavLit), the organ of official censorship, directing the development of the culture. Many of the GlavLit personnel were Jewish. For example, in GlavLit, from 1932 to 1941 we see A.I. Bendik, who would become the Director of the Book Palace during the war.2525 Emma Kaganova, the spouse of Chekist Pavel Sudoplatov was “trusted to manage the activities of informants
2520Ibid., p. 275. 2521Ibid., p. 277-278. 2522SJE, v. 4, p. 116. 2523RJE, v. 1, p. 245-246. 2524Lev Kopelev. O pravde i terpimosti [Of Truth and Tolerance]. New York: Khronika Press, 1982, p. 56-57. 2525RJE, v. 1, p. 108, 238-239.
among the Ukrainian intelligentsia.”2526 After private publishers were abolished, “a significant contribution to the organization and management of Soviet government publishers was made by S. Alyansky, M. Volfson, I. Ionov (Bernshtein), A. Kantorovich, B. Malkin, I. Berite, B. Feldman, and many others.”2527 Soon all book publishing was centralized in the State Publishing House and there was no other place for an author to get his work published. The Jewish presence was also apparent in all branches of the printed propaganda Works of the clumsy caricaturist Boris Efimov could be found in the press everyday (he produced extremely filthy images of Western leaders; for instance, he had portrayed Nicholas II in a crown carrying a rifle, trampling corpses). Every two to three days, sketches of other dirty satirists, like G. Riklin, the piercingly caustic D. Zaslavsky, the adroit Radek, the persistent Sheinin and the brothers Tur, appeared in press. A future writer L. Kassil wrote essays for Izvestiya. There were many others: R. Karmen, T. Tess, Kh. Rappoport, D. Chernomordikov, B. Levin, A. Kantorovich, and Ya. Perelman. These names I found in Izvestiya only, and there were two dozen more major newspapers feeding the public with blatant lies. In addition, there existed a whole sea of ignoble mass propaganda brochures saturated with lies. When they urgently needed a mass propaganda brochure devoted to the Industrial Party Trial (such things were in acute demand for all of the 1930s), one B. Izakson knocked it out under the title: “Crush the viper of intervention!” Diplomat E. Gnedin, the son of Parvus, wrote lying articles about the “incurable wounds of Europe” and the imminent death of the West. He also wrote a rebuttal article, Socialist Labor in the Forests of the Soviet North,in response to Western “slanders” about the allegedly forced labor of camp inmates felling timber. When in the 1950s Gnedin returned from a camp after a long term (though, it appears, not having experienced tree felling himself), he was accepted as a venerable sufferer and no one reminded him of his lies in the past. In 1929-31 Russian historical science was destroyed; the Archaeological Commission, the Northern Commission, Pushkin House, the Library of the Academy of Sciences were all abolished, traditions were smashed, and prominent Russian historians were sent to rot in camps. (How much did we hear about that destruction?) Third and fourth-rate Russian historians then surged in to occupy the vacant posts and brainwash us for the next half a century. Sure, quite a few Russian slackers made their careers then, but Jewish ones did not miss their chance. Already in the 1930s, Jews played a prominent role in Soviet science, especially in the most important and technologically-demanding frontiers, and their role was bound to become even more important in the future. “By the end of 1920s, Jews comprised 13.6% of all scientists in the country; by 1937 their
2526Pavel Sudoplatov. Spetsoperatsii: Lubyanka i Kreml: 1930s-1950s [Special Operations: Lubyanka [Prison] and the Kremlin: the 1930s through the 1950s]. Moscow: OLMA-Press, 1997, p. 19. 2527SJE, v. 4, p. 397.
share increased to 17.6%”; in 1939 there were more than 15,000 or 15.7% Jewish scientists and lecturers in the institutions of higher learning.”2528 In physics, member of the Academy A. F. Ioffe nurtured a highly successful school. As early as 1918, he founded the Physical-Technical Institute in Petrograd. Later, “fifteen affiliated scientific centers were created”; they were headed by Ioffe’s disciples. “His former students worked in many other institutes, in many ways determining the scientific and technological potential of the Soviet Union.”2529 (However, repressions did not bypass them. In 1938, in the Kharkov Physics-Technological Institute, six out of eight heads of departments were arrested: Vaisberg, Gorsky, Landau, Leipunsky, Obreimov, Shubnikov; a seventh—Rueman—was exiled; only Slutskin remained).2530 The name of Semyon Aisikovich, the constructor of Lavochkin fighter aircraft, was long unknown to the public.2531 Names of many other personalities in military industry were kept secret as well. Even now we do not know all of them. For instance, M. Shkud “oversaw development of powerful radio stations,”2532 yet there were surely others, whom we do not know, working on the development of no less powerful jammers.) Numerous Jewish names in technology, science and its applications prove that the flower of several Jewish generations went into these fields. Flipping through the pages of biographical tomes of the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, which only lists the Jews who were born or lived in Russia, we see an abundance of successful and gifted people with real accomplishments (which also means the absence of obstacles to career entry and advancement in general). Of course, scientists had to pay political tribute too. Take, for example, ”the First National Conference for the Planning of Science” in 1931. Academician Ioffe stated that “modern capitalism is no longer capable of a technological revolution,” it is only possible as a result of a social revolution, which has “transformed the once barbaric and backward Russia into the Socialist Union of Republics.” He praised the leadership of the proletariat in science and said that science can be free only under Soviet stewardship. “Militant philosopher” E. Ya. Kolman (“one of main ideologists of Soviet science in the 1930s”; he fulminated against the Moscow school of mathematics) asserted that “we should … introduce labor discipline in the sciences, adopt collective methods, socialist competition, and shock labor methods; he said that science advances “thanks to the proletarian dictatorship,” and that each scientist should study Lenin’s Materialism and Empirico-criticism. Academician A.G. Goldman (Ukraine)
2528SJE, v. 8, p. 190-191. 2529L.L. Mininberg. Sovetskie evrei v nauke i promishlennosti SSSR v period Vtoroi mirovoi voyny (1941-1945) [Soviet Jews in the Soviet Science and Industry during the Second World War (1941-1945)]. Moscow, 1995, p. 16. 2530Alexander Weissberg. Conspiracy of Silence. London, 1952, p. 359-360. 2531SJE, v. 4, p. 660. 2532RJE, v. 3, p. 401.
enthusiastically chimed in: “The academy now became the leading force in the struggle for the Marxist dialectic in science!”2533 The Jewish Encyclopedia summarizes: “At the end of 1930s, the role of the Jews in the various spheres of the Soviet life reached its apogee for the entire history of the Soviet regime.” According to the 1939 census, 40% of all economically active Jews were state  employees. Around 364,000 were categorized among the intelligentsia. Of them, 106,000 were engineers or technologists, representing 14% of all professionals of this category countrywide; 139,000 were managers at various levels, 7% of all administrators in the USSR; “39,000 doctors, or slightly less than 27% of all doctors; 38,000 teachers, or more than 3% of all teachers; “more than 6,500 writers, journalists, and editors; more than 5,000 actors and filmmakers; more than 6,000 musicians; a little less than 3,000 artists and sculptors; and more than 5,000 lawyers.”2534 In the opinion of the Encyclopedia, such impressive representation by a national minority, even in the context of official internationalism and brotherhood of the peoples of the USSR, created the prerequisites for the backlash by the state.”2535
During his political career, Stalin often allied with Jewish leaders of the communist party and relied on many Jewish back-benchers. By the mid-1930s he saw in the example of Hitler all the disadvantages of being a self-declared enemy of the Jews. Yet he likely harbored hostility toward them (his daughter’s memoirs support this), though even his closest circle was probably unaware of it. However, struggling against the Trotskyites, he, of course, realized this aspect as well –– his need to further get rid of the Jewish influence in the party. And, sensing the war, he perhaps was also grasping that “proletarian internationalism” alone would not be sufficient and that the notion of the “homeland,” and even the “Homeland”, would be much needed. S. Schwartz lamented about anti-revolutionary transformation of the party as the “unprecedented ‘purge’ of the ruling party, the virtual destruction of the old party and the establishment of a new communist party under the same name in its place – new in social composition and ideology.” From 1937 he also noted a “gradual displacement of Jews from the positions of power in all spheres of public life.” “Among the old Bolsheviks who were involved in the activity before the party came to power and especially among those with the prerevolutionary involvement, the percentage of Jews was noticeably higher than in the party on average; in younger generations, the Jewish representation became even smaller… As a result of the purge, almost all important Jewish
2533Izvestiya, April 7, 1931, p. 2; April 11, p. 3; April 12, p. 4. See also RJE, v. 2, p. 61-62. 2534SJE, v. 8, p. 191. 2535SJE, v. 8, p. 191.
communists left the scene.”2536 Lazar Kaganovich was the exception. Still, in 1939, after all the massacres, the faithful communist Zemlyachka was made the deputy head of the Soviet of People’s Commissars, and S. Dridzo-Lozovsky was assigned the position of Deputy to the Narkom of Foreign Affairs.2537 And yet, in the wider picture, Schwartz’s observations are reasonable as was demonstrated above. S. Schwartz adds that in the second half of 1930s Jews were gradually barred from entering “institutions of higher learning, which were preparing specialists for foreign relations and foreign trade, and were barred from military educational institutions.”2538 The famous defector from the USSR, I.S. Guzenko, shared rumors about a secret percentage quota on Jewish admissions to the institutions of higher learning which was enforced from 1939. In the 1990s they even wrote that Molotov, taking over the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in the spring of 1939, publicly announced during the general meeting with the personnel that he “will deal with the synagogue here,” and that he began firing Jews on the very same day. (Still, Litvinov was quite useful during the war in his role as Soviet ambassador to the U.S. They say that upon his departure from the U.S. in 1943 he even dared to pass a personal letter to Roosevelt suggesting that Stalin had unleashed an antiSemitic campaign in the USSR).2539 By the mid-1930s the sympathy of European Jewry toward the USSR had further increased. Trotsky explained it in 1937 on his way to Mexico: “The Jewish intelligentsia … turns to the Comintern not because they are interested in Marxism or Communism, but in search of support against aggressive [German] anti-Semitism.”2540 Yet it was this same Comintern that approved the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the pact that dealt a mortal blow to the East European Jewry! “In September 1939, hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews fled from the advancing German armies, fleeing further and further east and trying to head for the territory occupied by the Red Army…. For the first two months they succeeded because of the favorable attitude of the Soviet authorities. The Germans quite often encouraged this flight.” But “at the end of November the Soviet government closed the border.”2541
2536S.M. Schwartz. Antisemitizm v Sovetskom Soyuze [Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union]. New York: Chekov’s Publishing House, 1952, p.  111-112, 114, 121-122. 2537RJE, v. 1, p. 486; v. 2, p. 196. 2538S.M. Schwartz. Evrei v Sovetskom Soyuze s nachala Vtoroi mirovoi voyny (1939-1965) [Jews in the Soviet Union after the Beginning of the Second World War (1939-1965)]. New York: Publication of the American Jewish Workers Committee, 1966, p. 410. 2539Z. Sheinis, M.M. Litvinov. Poslednie dni [The Last Days] // Sovershenno Sekretno [Top Secret]. Moscow, 1992, (4), p. 15. 2540Lev Trotsky. Pochemu oni kayalis [Why They Repented] // EW, New York, 1985, (87), p. 226. 2541E. Kulisher. Izgnanie i deportatsiya evreev [The Expulsion and Deportation of the Jews] // Evreiskiy mir [The Jewish World], v. 2 (henceforth—JW-2). New York: Soyuz russkikh evreyev v New Yorke [The Union of Russian Jews in New York], 1944, p. 259.
In different areas of the front things took shape differently: in some areas, the Soviets would not admit Jewish refugees at all; in other places they were welcomed but later sometimes sent back to the Germans. Overall, it is believed that around 300,000 Jews managed to migrate from the Western to the Eastern Poland in the first months of the war, and later the Soviets evacuated them deeper into the USSR. They demanded that Polish Jews register as Soviet citizens, but many of them did not rush to accept Soviet citizenship: after all, they thought, the war would soon be over, and they would return home, or go to America, or to Palestine. (Yet in the eyes of the Soviet regime they thereby immediately fell under the category of “suspected of espionage,” especially if they tried to correspond with relatives in Poland).2542 Still, we read in the Chicago Sentinel that the Soviet Union gave refuge to 90% of all European Jewish refugees fleeing from Hitler.”2543 According to the January 1939 census, 3,020,000 Jews lived in the USSR. Now, after occupation of the Baltics, annexation of a part of Poland, and taking in Jewish refugees, approximately two million more Jews were added, giving a total of around 5 million.2544 Before 1939, the Jews were the seventh largest people in the USSR number-wise; now, after annexation of all Western areas, they became the fourth largest people of the USSR, after the three Slavic peoples, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian. “The mutual non-Aggression Pact of 23 August 1939 between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union evoked serious fear about the future of Soviet Jewry, though the policy of the Soviet Union toward its Jewish citizens was not changed.” And although there were some reverse deportations, overall, “the legal status of Jewish population remained unchanged during the 20 months of the Soviet-German collaboration.”2545 With the start of war in Poland, Jewish sympathies finally crystallized and Polish Jews, and the Jewish youth in particular, met the advancing Red Army with exulting enthusiasm. Thus, according to many testimonies (including M. Agursky’s one), Polish Jews, like their co-ethnics in Bessarabia, Bukovina and Lithuania, became the main pillar of the Soviet regime, supporting it tooth and nail. Yet how much did these East European Jews know about what was going on in the USSR? They unerringly sensed that a catastrophe was rolling at them from Germany, though still not fully or clearly recognized, but undoubtedly a
2542S.M. Schwartz. Evrei v Sovetskom Soyuze s nachala Vtoroi mirovoi voyny (1939-1965) [Jews in the Soviet Union after the Beginning of the Second World War (1939-1965)]. New York: Publication of the American Jewish Workers Committee, 1966, p. 33-34. 2543The Sentinel, Chicago, Vol. XXXXIII, (13), 1946, 27 June, p.5. 2544G. Aronson. Evreyskiy vopros v epokhu Stalina [The Jewish Question in the Stalin’s Era] // BRJ, p. 141. 2545I. Shekhman. Sovetskoe evreystvo v germano-sovetskoy voyne [Soviet Jewry in the RussoGerman War] // JW-2, p. 221-222.
catastrophe. And so the Soviet welcome appeared to them to embody certain salvation.
Chapter 20. In the camps of GULag
If I haven’t been there, it wouldn’t be possible for me to compose this chapter. Before the camps I thought that “one should not notice nationalities”, that there are no nationalities, there is only humankind. But when you are sent into the camp, you find it out: if you are of a lucky nationality then you are a fortunate man. You are provided for. You have survived! But if you are of a common nationality – well then, no offence… Because nationality is perhaps the most important trait that gives a prisoner a chance to be picked into the life-saving corps of “Idiots” [translator note: from Russian “придурок” – a fool or idiot. This is an inmate slang term to denote other inmates who didn’t do common labor but managed to obtain positions with easy duties, usually pretending to be incapable of doing hard work because of poor health]. Every experienced camp inmate can confirm that ethnic proportions among Idiots were very different from those in the general camp population. Indeed, there were virtually no Pribalts among Idiots, regardless of their actual number in the camp (and there were many of them); there were always Russians, of course, but in incomparably smaller proportion than in the camp on average (and those were often selected from orthodox members of the Party); on the other hand, some others were noticeably concentrated – Jews, Georgians, Armenians; and Azeris also ended there in higher proportions, and, to some extent, Caucasian mountaineers also. Certainly, none of them can be blamed for that. Every nation in the Gulag did its best crawling to survival, and the smaller and nimbler it was, the easier it was to accomplish. And again, Russians were the very last nation in “their own Russian camps”, like they were in the German Kriegsgefan-genenlagers. Yet it is not us who could have blamed them, but it is they – Armenians, Georgians, highlanders, who would have been in their right to ask us: “Why did you establish these camps? Why do you force us to live in your state? Do not hold us and we will not land here and occupy these such attractive Idiotic positions! But while we are your prisoners – a la guerre comme a la guerre.” But what about Jews? For Fate interwove Russian and Jews, perhaps forever, which is why this book is being written. Before that, before this very line, there will be readers who have been in the camps and who haven’t been, who will be quick to contest the truth of what I say here. They will claim that many Jews were forced to take part in common labor activities. They will deny that there were camps where Jews were the
majority among Idiots. They will indignantly reject that nations in the camps were helping each other selectively, and, therefore, at the expense of others. Some others will not consider themselves as distinct “Jews” at all, perceiving themselves as Russians in everything. Besides, even if there was overrepresentation of Jews on key camp positions, it was absolutely unpremeditated, wasn’t it? The selection was exclusively based on merit and personal talents and abilities to do business. Well, who is to blame if Russians lack business talents? There will be also those who will passionately assert directly opposite: that it was Jews who suffered worst in the camps. This is exactly how it is understood in the West: in Soviet camps nobody suffered as badly as Jews. Among the letters from readers of Ivan Denisovich there was one from an anonymous Jew: “You have met innocent Jews who languished in camps with you, and you obviously not at once witnessed their suffering and persecution. They endured double oppression: imprisonment and enmity from the rest of inmates. Tell us about these people!” And if I wished to generalize and state that the life of Jews in camps was especially difficult, then I would be allowed to do so and wouldn’t be peppered with admonitions for unjust ethnic generalizations. But in the camps, where I was imprisoned, it was the other way around – the life of Jews, to the extent of possible generalization, was easier. Semen Badash, my campmate from Ekibastuz, recounts in his memoirs how he had managed to settle – later, in a camp at Norilsk  – in the medical unit: Max Minz asked a radiologist Laslo Newsbaum to solicit for Badash before a free head of the unit. He was accepted.2546 But Badash at least finished three years of medical school before imprisonment. Compare that with other nurses – Genkin, Gorelik, Gurevich (like one of my pals, L. Kopelev from Unzlag) – who never before in their lives had anything to do with medicine. Some people absolutely seriously write like this: A. Belinkov “was thrown into the most despicable category of Idiots…” (and I am tempted to inappropriately add “and languishers” here, though the “Languishers” were the social antipodes of Idiots and Belinkov never was among the Languishers). – “To be thrown into the group ofIdiots”! – what’s an expression! “To be diminished by being accepted into the ranks of gentlemen”? And here goes the justification: “To dig soil? But at the age of 23 he not only never did it – he never saw a shovel in his life”.2547 Well then he had no other choice but to become an Idiot. Or read what Levitin-Krasnov wrote about one Pinsky, a literature expert, that he was a nurse in the camp. Which means that he, on the camp scale, has
2546Семён Бадаш. Колыма ты моя, Колыма… New York: Effect Publishing Inc.. 1986, с. 6566. 2547В. Лемпорт. Эллипсы судьбы // Время и мы: Международный журнал литературы и общественных проблем. Нью-Йорк, 1991, № 113. с. 168.
adhered well. However, Levitin presents this as an example of the greatest humiliation possible for a professor of the humanities. Or take prisoner who survived, Lev Razgon, a journalist and not a medic at all, who was heavily published afterwards. But from his story in “Ogonek” (1988) we find that he used to be a medic in the camp’s medical unit, and, moreover, an unescorted medic. (From other his stories we can figure out that he also worked as a senior controller at a horrible timber logging station. But there is not a single story from which we can conclude that he ever participated in common labor.) Or a story of Frank Dikler, a Jew from faraway Brazil: he was imprisoned and couldn’t speak Russian, of course, and guess what? He had pull in the camp, and he has became a chief of the medical unit’s kitchen – a truly magnificent treasure! Or Alexandr Voronel, who was a ”political youngster” when he landed in the camps, says that immediately after getting in the camp, he was “readily assisted… by other Jewish inmates, who had not a slightest idea about my political views”. A Jewish inmate, responsible for running the bathhouse (a very important Idiot as well), has spotted him instantly and “ordered him to come if he needs any help”; a Jew from prisoner security (also an Idiot) told another Jew, a brigadier: “There are two Jewish guys, Hakim, don’t allow them to get in trouble”. And the brigadier gave them strong protection. “Other thieves, especially “elders”, approved him: You are so right, Hakim! You support your own kin! Yet we, Russians, are like wolves to each other””.2548 And let’s not forget that even during camp imprisonment, by virtue of a common stereotype regarding all Jews as businessmen, many of them were getting commercial offers, sometimes even when they didn’t actively look for such enterprises. Take, for instance, M. Hafez. He emphatically notes: “What a pity that I can’t describe you those camp situations. There are so many rich, beautiful stories! However, the ethical code of a “reliable Jew” seals my mouth. You know even the smallest commercial secret should be kept forever. That’s the law of the Tribe”.2549 A Lett Ane Bernstein, one of my witnesses from Archipelago, thinks that he managed to survive in the camps only because in times of hardship he asked the Jews for help and that the Jews, judging by his last name and nimble manners, mistook him for their tribesman – and always provided assistance. He says that in all his camps Jews always constituted the upper crust, and that the most important free employees were also Jews (Shulman – head of special department, Greenberg – head of camp station, Kegels – chief mechanic of the factory), and, according to his recollections, they also preferred to select Jewish inmates to staff their units.
2548Л. Воронель. Трепет иудейских забот. 2-е изд. Рамат-Ган: Москва-Иерусалим, 1981, с. 28-29. 2549Михаил Хейфец. Место и время (еврейские заметки). Париж: Третья волна, 1978, с. 93.
This particular Jewish national contract between free bosses and inmates is impossible to overlook. A free Jew was not so stupid to actually see an “Enemy of the People” or an evil character preying on “the people’s property” in an imprisoned Jew (unlike what a dumb-headed Russian saw in another Russian). He in the first place saw a suffering tribesman – and I praise them for this sobriety! Those who know about terrific Jewish mutual supportiveness (especially exacerbated by mass deaths of Jews under Hitler) would understand that a free Jewish boss simply could not indifferently watch Jewish prisoners flounder in starvation and die, and not help. But I am unable to imagine a free Russian employee who would save and promote his fellow Russian prisoners to the privileged positions only because of their nationality. Though we have lost 15 millions during collectivization, we are still numerous. You can’t care about everyone, and nobody would even think about it. Sometimes, when such a team of Jewish inmates smoothly bands together and, being no longer impeded by the ferocious struggle for survival, they can engage in extraordinary activities. An engineer named Abram Zisman tells us: “In Novo-Archangelsk camp, in our spare time, [we] decided to count how many Jewish pogroms occurred over the course of Russian history. We managed to excite the curiosity of our camp command on this question (they had a peaceful attitude toward us). TheNachlag [camp commander] was captain Gremin (N. Gershel, a Jew, son of a tailor from Zhlobin). He sent an inquiry to the archives of the former Interior Department requesting the necessary information, and after eight months we received an official reply that … 76 Jewish pogroms occurred from 1811 to 1917 on the territory of Russia with the number of victims estimated at approximately 3,000” (That is, the total number of those who suffered in any way.) The author reminds us that during one sixmonth period in medieval Spain more than twenty thousand Jews were killed.2550 A plot-like atmosphere emanates from the recollections of Josef Berger, a communist, about a highly-placed snitch Lev Ilyich Inzhir. A former Menshevik, arrested in 1930, he immediately began collaborating with the GPU, fearing reprisals against his family and the loss of his apartment in the center of Moscow. He “helped to prepare the Menshevik trial” of 1931, falsely testified against his best friends, was absolved and immediately appointed as a chief accountant of Belomorstroi. During the Yezhovschina he was a chief accountant of the GULag “enjoying the complete trust of his superiors and with connections to the very top NKVD officials”. (Inzhir recalled one “Jewish NKVD veteran who interlarded his words with aphorisms from Talmud”.) He was arrested later again, this time on the wave of anti-Yezhov purges. However, Inzhir’s former colleagues from the GULag favorably arranged his imprisonment. However, at this point he turned into an explicit ”snitch and provocateur”, and other inmates suspected that the plentiful parcels he was
2550А. Зисман. «Книга о русском еврействе» // Новая Заря, Сан-Франциско, 1960, 7 мая, с. 3.
receiving were not from his relatives but directly from the Third Department. Nevertheless, later in 1953 in the Tayshet camp, he was sentenced to an additional jail term, this time being accused of Trotskyism and of concealing his “sympathies for the State of Israel” from the Third Department.2551 Of worldwide infamy, BelBallag absorbed hundreds of thousands of Russian, Ukrainian and Middle Asian peasants between 1931 and 1932. Opening a newspaper issue from August, 1933, dedicated to the completion of the canal [between White and Baltic seas], we find a list of awardees. Lower ranking orders and medals were awarded to concreters, steelfixers, etc, but the highest degree of decoration, the Order of Lenin, was awarded to eight men only, and we can see large photographs of each. Only two of them were actual engineers, the rest were the chief commanders of the canal (according to Stalin’s understanding of personal contribution). And whom do we see here? Genrikh Yagoda, head of NKVD. Matvei Berman, head of GULag. Semen Firin, commander of BelBaltlag (by that time he was already the commander of Dmitlag, where the story will later repeat itself). Lazar Kogan, head of construction (later he will serve the same function at Volgocanal). Jacob Rapoport, deputy head of construction. Naftaly Frenkel, chief manager of the labor force of Belomorstroi (and the evil demon of the whole Archipelago).2552 And all their portraits were enlarged and reprinted again in the solemnly shameful book Belomorcanal2553 – a book of huge Scriptural size, like some revelation anticipating advent of the Millenarian Kingdom. And then I reproduced these six portraits of villains in Archipelago, borrowing them from their own exhibition and without any prior editing, showing everybody who was originally displayed. Oh my God, what a worldwide rage has surged! How dared I?! This is anti-Semitism! I am a branded and screwed anti-Semite. At best, to reproduce these portraits was “national egotism” – i.e. Russian egotism! And they dared to say it despite what follows immediately on the next pages of Archipelago: how docilely “Kulak” lads were freezing to death under their barrows. One wonders, where were their eyes in 1933 when it was printed for the very first time? Why weren’t they so indignant then? Let me repeat what I professed once to the Bolsheviks: one should be ashamed of hideosity not when it is disclosed to public but when it is done. A particular conundrum exists with respect to the personality of Naftaly Frenkel, that tireless demon of Archipelago: how to explain his strange return from Turkey in 1920’s? He successfully got away from Russia with all his capitals after the first harbingers of revolution. In Turkey, he attained a secure, rich and unconstrained social standing, and he never harbored any Communist ideas. And yet he returned? To come back and become a toy for the GPU and 2551Иосиф Бергер. Крушение поколения: Воспоминания / Пер. с англ. Firenze: Edizioni Aurora. 1973, с. 148-164. 2552Известия, 1933. 5 августа, с. 1-2. 2553Беломорско-Балтийский Канал имени Сталина: История строительства / Под ред. М. Горького, Л.Л. Авербаха. С.Г. Фирина. [М.]: История Фабрик и Заводов, 1934.
for Stalin, to spend several years in imprisonment himself, but in return to accomplish the most ruthless oppression of imprisoned engineers and the extermination of hundreds of thousands of the “de-Kulakized”? What could have motivated his insatiable evil heart? I am unable to imagine any possible reason except vengeance toward Russia. If anyone can provide an alternative explanation, please do so.2554 What else could be revealed by someone with a thorough understanding of the structure of the camp command? The head of 1st Department of Belomorstroi was one Wolf; the head of the Dmitrov section of Volgocanal was Bovshover. The finance division of Belomorstroi was headed by L. Berenzon, his deputies were A. Dorfman, the already mentioned Inzhir, Loevetsky, Kagner, Angert. And how many of the other humbler posts remain unmentioned? Is it really reasonable to suppose that Jews were digging soil with shovels and racing their hand-barrows and dying under those barrows from exhaustion and emaciation? Well, view it as you wish. A. P. Skripnikova and D. P. Vitkovsky, who were there, told me that Jews were overrepresented among Idiots during construction of Belomorcanal, and they did not roll barrows and did not die under them. And you could find highly-placed Jewish commanders not only at BelBaltlag. Construction of the Kotlas-Vorkuta railroad was headed by Moroz (his son married Svetlana Stalina); the special officer-in-charge of GULag in the Far East was Grach. These are only a few of the names, which resurfaced accidentally. If a former inmate Thomas Sgovio, an American national, didn’t write to me, I wouldn’t be aware about the head of the Chai-Uryinsk Mining Administration on Kolyma between 1943-44 (at the depths of the Patriotic War): “Half-colonel Arm was a tall black-haired Jew with a terrible reputation… His orderly man was selling ethanol to everybody, 50 grams for 50 rubles. Arm had his own personal tutor of English – a young American, arrested in Karelia. His wife was paid a salary for an accountant’s position, but she didn’t work – her job was actually performed by an inmate in the office” (a common practice revealing how families of GULag commanders used to have additional incomes). Or take another case: during the age of glasnost, one Soviet newspaper published a story about the dreadful GULag administration that built a tunnel between Sakhalin and the mainland. It was called the “Trust of Arais”.2555 Who was that comrade Arais? I have no idea. But how many perished in his mines and in the unfinished tunnel? Sure, I knew a number of Jews (they were my friends) who carried all the hardships of common labor. In Archipelago, I described a young man, Boris Gammerov, who quickly found his death in the camp. (While his friend, the writer Ingal, was made an accountant from the very first day in the camp, although his knowledge of arithmetic was very poor.) I knew Volodya Gershuni,
2554Подробнее о Френкеле — в «Архипелаге ГУЛаге». 2555Г. Миронова. Туннель в прошлое // Комсомольская правда, 1989, 18 апреля, с. 1.
an irreconcilable and incorruptible man. I knew Jog Masamed, who did common labor in the hard labor camp at Ekibastuz on principle, though he was called upon to join the Idiots. Besides, I would like to list here a teacher Tatyana Moiseevna Falike, who spent 10 years drudging, she said, like a beast of burden. And I also would like to name here a geneticist Vladimir Efroimson, who spent 13 out of his 36 months of imprisonment (one out of his two terms) doing common labor. He also did it on principle, though he also had better options. Relying on parcels from home (one cannot blame him for that), he picked the hand-barrow precisely because there were many Jews from Moscow in that Jezkazgan camp, and they were used to settling well, while Efroimson wanted to dispel any grudge toward Jews, which was naturally emerging among inmates. And what did his brigade think about his behavior? – “He is a black sheep among Jews; would a real Jew roll a barrow?” He was similarly ridiculed by Jewish Idiots who felt annoyed that he “flaunted himself” to reproach them. In the same vein, another Jew, Jacov Davydovich Grodzensky, who also beavered in the common category, was judged by others: “Is he really a Jew?” It is so symbolic! Both Efroimson and Grodzenskiy did those right and best things, which could be only motivated by the noblest of Jewish appeals, to honestly share the common lot, and they were not understood by either side! They are always difficult and derided – the paths of austerity and dedication, the only ones that can save humanity. I try not to overlook such examples, because all my hopes depend on them. Let’s add here a valiant Gersh Keller, one of the leaders of Kengir uprising in 1954 (he was 30 years old when executed). I also read about Yitzhak Kaganov, commander of an artillery squadron during the Soviet-German war. In 1948, he was sentenced to 25 years for Zionism. During 7 years of imprisonment he wrote 480 pieces of poetry in Hebrew, which he memorized without writing them down.2556 During his third trial (July 10, 1978), after already serving two terms, Alexander Ginsburg, was asked a question “What is your nationality?” and replied: “Inmate!” That was a worthy and serious response, and it angered the tribunal. But he deserved it for his work for the Russian Public Relief Fund, which provided assistance to families of political prisoners of all nationalities, and by his manly vocation. This is what we are – a genuine breed of prisoners, regardless of nationality. However, my camps were different, – spanning from the “great” Belomor to the tiny 121st camp district of the 15th OLP of Moscow’s UITLK (which left behind a not inconspicuous semi-circular building at Kaluga’s gate in Moscow). Out there, our entire life was directed and trampled by three leading Idiots: Solomon Solomonov, a chief accountant; David Burstein, first an “educator” and later a work-assigning clerk; and Isaac Bershader. (Earlier, in exactly the
2556Российская Еврейская Энциклопедия. 2-е изд., испр. и доп. М.. 1994. Т. 1, с. 526-527; 1995. Т. 2. с. 27.
same way, Solomonov and Bershader ruled over the camp at the Moscow Highway Institute, MHI.) Note that all this happened under auspices of a Russian camp commander, one ensign Mironov. All three of them came up before my eyes, and to get positions for them, in each case their Russian predecessors were instantly removed from the posts. Solomonov was sent in first; he confidently seized a proper position and quickly got on the right side of the ensign. (I think, using food and money from outside.) Soon after that the wretched Bershader was sent in from MHI with an accompanying note “to use him only in the common labor category” (a quite unusual situation for a domestic criminal, which probably meant substantial delinquency). He was about fifty years old, short, fat, with a baleful glare. He walked around condescendingly inspecting our living quarters, with the look of a general from the head department. The senior proctor asked him: “What is your specialty?” – “Storekeeper”. – “There is no such specialty” – “Well, I am a storekeeper”. – “Anyway, you are going to work in the common labor brigade”. For two days he was sent there. Shrugging his shoulders, he went out, and, upon entering the work zone, he used to seat himself on a stone and rest respectably. The brigadier would have hit him, but he quailed – the newcomer was so selfconfident, that anyone could sense power behind him. The camp’s storekeeper, Sevastyanov, was depressed as well. For two years he was in charge of the combined provision and sundry store. He was firmly established and lived on good terms with the brass, but now he was chilled: everything is already settled! Bershader is a “storekeeper by specialty”! Then the medical unit discharged Bershader from the labor duties on grounds of “poor health” and after that he rested in the living quarters. Meanwhile, he probably got something from outside. And within less than a week Sevastyanov was removed from his post, and Bershader was made a storekeeper (with the assistance of Solomonov). However, at this point it was found that the physical labor of pouring grain and rearranging boots, which was done by Sevastyanov single-handedly, was also contraindicated for Bershader. So he was given a henchman, and Solomonov’s bookkeeping office enlisted the latter as service personnel. But it was still not a sufficiently abundant life. The best looking proudest woman of the camp, the swan-like lieutenant-sniper M. was bent to his will and forced to visit him in his store-room in the evenings. After Burstein showed himself in the camp, he arranged to have another camp beauty, A. S., to come to his cubicle. Is it difficult to read this? But they were by no means troubled how it looked from outside. It even seemed as if they thickened the impression on purpose. And how many such little camps with similar establishments were there all across the Archipelago? And did Russian Idiots behave in the same way, unrestrained and insanely!? Yes. But within every other nation it was perceived socially, like an eternal strain between rich and poor, lord and servant. However, when an alien
emerges as a “master over life and death” it further adds to the heavy resentment. It might appear strange – isn’t it all the same for a worthless negligible, crushed, and doomed camp dweller surviving at one of his dying stages? isn’t it all the same who exactly seizes the power inside the camp and celebrates crow’s picnics over his trench-grave? As it turns out, it is not. These things have been etched into my memory inerasably. In my play Republic of Labor, I presented some of the events that happened in that camp on Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya 30. Understanding the impossibility of depicting everything like it was in reality, because it would be inevitably considered as incitement of anti-Jewish sentiment (as if that trio of Jews was not inflaming it in real life, caring little about consequences) I withheld the abominably greedy Bershader. I concealed Burstein. I recomposed the profiteer Rosa Kalikman into an amorphous Bella of eastern origin, and retained the only Jew, accountant Solomonov, exactly like he was in life. So, what about my loyal Jewish friends after they perused the play? The play aroused extraordinarily passionate protests from V. L. Teush. He read it not immediately but when Sovremennik had already decided to stage it in 1962, so the question was far from scholarly. The Teushes were deeply injured by the figure of Solomonov. They thought it was dishonest and unjust to show such a Jew (despite that in the real life, in the camp, he was exactly as I showed him) in the age of oppression of Jews. (But then, it appears to me that such age is everlasting? When have our Jews not been oppressed?) Teush was alarmed and extremely agitated, and put forward an ultimatum that if I did not remove or at least soften up the image of Solomonov, then all our friendship will be ruined and he and his wife will no longer be able to keep my manuscripts. Moreover, they prophesized that my very name will be irretrievably lost and blemished if I leave Solomonov in the play. Why not to make him a Russian? They were astonished. Is it so important that he be a Jew? (But if it doesn’t matter, why did Solomonov select Jews to be Idiots?) I took a chill pill: a sudden censorial ban, no less weighty than the official Soviet prohibition, had emerged from an unanticipated direction. However, the situation was soon resolved by the official prohibition forbidding Sovremennik to stage the piece. And there was another objection from Teush: “Your Solomonov has anything but Jewish personality. A Jew always behaves discreetly, cautiously, suppliantly, and even cunningly, but from where comes this pushy impudence of jubilant force? This is not true, it cannot happen like this!” However, I remember not this Solomonov alone, and it was exactly like that! I saw many things in the 1920’s and 1930’s in Rostov-on-Don. And Frenkel acted similarly, according to the recollections of surviving engineers. Such a slip of a triumphant power into insolence and arrogance is the most repelling thing for those around. Sure, it is usually behavior of the worst and rudest – but this is what becomes imprinted in memory. (Likewise the Russian image is soiled by the obscenities of our villains.)
All these blandishments and appeals to avoid writing about the things like they were – are undistinguishable from what we heard from the highest Soviet tribunes: about anti-defamation, about socialist realism – to write like it should be, not like it was. As if a creator is capable of forgetting or creating his past anew! As if the full truth can be written in parts, including only what is pleasing, secure and popular. And how meticulously all the Jewish characters in my books were analyzed with every personal feature weighted on apothecary scales. But the astonishing story of Grigory M., who did not deliver the order to retreat to a dying regiment because he was frightened (Archipelago GULag, v. 6, Ch. 6) – was not noticed. It was passed over without a single word! And Ivan Denisovich added insult to injury: there were such sophisticated sufferers but I put forward a boor! For instance, during Gorbachev’s glasnost, emboldened Asir Sandler published his camp memoirs. “After first perusal, I emphatically rejected One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich… the main personage was Ivan Denisovich, a man with minimal spiritual needs, focused only on his mundane troubles” – and Solzhenitsyn turned him into the national image… (Exactly like all well-meaning communists were grumbling at that time!) While “[Solzhenitsyn] preferred not to notice the true intelligentsia, the determinant of domestic culture and science”. Sandler was discussing this with Miron Markovich Etlis (both used to be Idiots in medical unit). And Etlis added: “The story is significantly distorted, placed upside down”. “Solzhenitsyn failed to emphasize …the intelligent part of our contingent”… Self-centered reflections [of Ivan Denisovich] about himself… that patience… that pseudo-Christian attitude toward others”. And in 1964 Sandler was lucky to relieve his feelings in conversation with Ehrenburg himself. And the latter affirmatively nodded when Sandler mentioned his “extremely negative” feeling toward my novelette.2557 However, not a single Jew reproached me that Ivan Denisovich, in essence, attends to Cesar Markovich as a servant, albeit with good feelings.
2557Асир Сандлер. Узелки на память: Записки реабилитированного. Магаданское книжн. изд-во. 1988, с. 22. 62-64.
Chapter 21. During the Soviet-German War
After Kristallnacht (November 1938) the German Jews lost their last illusions about the mortal danger they were facing. With Hitler’s campaign in Poland, the deadly storm headed East. Yet nobody expected that the beginning of the Soviet-German War would move Nazi politics to a new level, toward total physical extermination of Jews. While they naturally expected all kinds of hardship from the German conquest, Soviet Jews could not envision the indiscriminate mass killings of men and women of all ages – one cannot foresee such things. Thus the terrible and inescapable fate befell those who remained in the German-occupied territories without a chance to resist. Lives ended abruptly. But before their death, they had to pass through either initial forced relocation to a Jewish ghetto, or a forced labor camp, or to gas vans, or through digging one’s own grave and stripping before execution. The Russian Jewish Encyclopedia gives many names of the Russian Jews who fell victims to the Jewish Catastrophe; it names those who perished in Rostov, Simferopol, Odessa, Minsk, Belostok, Kaunas, and Narva. There were prominent people among them. The  famous historian S.M. Dubnov spent the entire inter-war period in exile. He left Berlin for Riga after Hitler took power. He was arrested during the German occupation and placed in a ghetto; “in December 1941 he was included into a column of those to be executed”.”From Vilna, historian Dina Joffe and director of the Jewish Gymnasium Joseph Yashunskiy were sent to concentration camps (both were killed in Treblinka in 1943). Rabbi Shmuel Bespalov, head of the Hasidim movement in Bobruisk, was shot in 1941 when the city was captured by the Germans. Cantor Gershon Sirota, whose performance had once “caught the attention of Nicholas II” and who performed yearly in St. Petersburg and Moscow, died in 1941 in Warsaw. There were two brothers Paul and Vladimir Mintz: Paul, the elder, was a prominent Latvian politician, “the only Jew in the government of Latvia”. Vladimir was a surgeon, who had been entrusted with the treatment of Lenin in 1918 after the assassination attempt. From 1920 he lived in Latvia. In 1940 the Soviet occupation authorities arrested Paul Mintz and placed him in a camp in Krasnoyarsk Krai, where he died early on. The younger brother lived in Riga and was not touched. He died in 1945 at Büchenwald. Sabina Shpilreyn, a doctor of medicine, psychoanalyst and a close colleague of Carl Jung, returned to Russia in 1923 after working in clinics in Zurich, Munich, Berlin and
Geneva;in 1942 she was shot along with other Jews by Germans in her native Rostov-on-Don. (In Chapter 19, we wrote about the deaths of her three scientist brothers during Stalin’s terror.) Yet many were saved from death by evacuation in 1941 and 1942. Various Jewish wartime and postwar sources do not doubt the dynamism of this evacuation. For example, in The Jewish World, a book written in 1944, one can read: “The Soviet authorities were fully aware that the Jews were the most endangered part of the population, and despite the acute military needs in transport, thousands of trains were provided for their evacuation. … In many cities … Jews were evacuated first”, although the author believes that the statement of the Jewish writer David Bergelson that “approximately 80% of Jews were successfully evacuated”2558 is an exaggeration. Bergelson wrote: “In Chernigov, the pre-war Jewish population was estimated at 70,000 people and only 10,000 of them remained by the time the Germans arrived. … In Dnepropetrovsk, out of the original Jewish population of 100,000 only 30,000 remained when the Germans took the city. In Zhitomir, out of 50,000 Jews, no less than 44,000 left.”2559 In the Summer 1946 issue of the bulletin, Hayasa E.M. Kulisher wrote: “There is no doubt that the Soviet authorities took special measures to evacuate the Jewish population or to facilitate its unassisted flight. Along with the state personnel and industrial workers, Jews were given priority [in the evacuation] … The Soviet authorities provided thousands of trains specifically for the evacuation of Jews.”2560 Also, as a safer measure to avoid bombing raids, Jews were evacuated by thousands of haywagons, taken from kolkhozes and sovkhozes [collective farms] and driven over to railway junctions in the rear. B.T. Goldberg, a son-in-law of Sholem Aleichem and then a correspondent for the Jewish newspaper Der Tog from New York, after a 1946-1947 winter trip to the Soviet Union wrote an article about the wartime evacuation of Jews (Der Tog, February 21, 1947). His sources in Ukraine, “Jews and Christians, the military and evacuees, all stated that the policy of the authorities was to give the Jews a preference during evacuation, to save as many of them as possible so that the Nazis would not destroy them.”2561 And Moshe Kaganovich, a former Soviet partisan, in his by then foreign memoirs (1948) confirms that the Soviet government provided for the evacuation of Jews all available vehicles in addition to trains, including trains of haywagons – and the orders were to evacuate “first and foremost the citizens of Jewish nationality
2558И. Шехтман. Советское еврейство в германо-советской войне // Еврейский мир: Сб. 2 (далее — ЕМ-2). Нью-Йорк: Союз русских евреев в Нью-Йорке, 1944. с. 225-226. 2559А.А. Гольдштейн. Судьба евреев в оккупированной немцами Советской России // Книга о русском еврействе. 1917-1967 (далее — КРЕ-2). Нью-Йорк: Союз Русских Евреев, 1968, с. 89, 92. 2560Rescue: Information Bulletin of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), July-August 1946 (Vol. Ill, № 7-8), p. 2. — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе с начала Второй мировой войны (1939-1965). Нью-Йорк: Изд. Американского Еврейского Рабочего Комитета, 1966, с. 45. 2561С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…*, с. 55.
from the areas threatened by the enemy”.(Note that S. Schwartz and later researchers dispute the existence of such orders, as well as the general policy of Soviet authorities to evacuate Jews “as such.”2562) Nevertheless, both earlier and later sources provide fairly consistent estimates of the number of Jews who were evacuated or fled without assistance from the German-occupied territories. Official Soviet figures are not available; all researchers complain that the contemporaneous statistics are at best approximate. Let us rely then on the works of the last decade. A demographer M. Kupovetskiy, who used formerly unavailable archival materials and novel techniques of analysis, offers the following assessment. According to the 1939 census, 3,028,538 Jews lived in the USSR within its old (that is, pre-19391940) boundaries. With some corrections to this figure and taking into account the rate of natural increase of the Jewish population from September 1939 to June 1941 (he analyzed each territory separately), this researcher suggests that at the outbreak of the war approximately 3,080,000 Jews resided within the old USSR borders. Of these, 900,000 resided in the territories which would not be occupied by Germans, and at the beginning of the war 2,180, 000 Jews (“Eastern Jews”)2563 resided in the territories later occupied by the Germans. “There is no exact data regarding the number of Jews who fled or were evacuated to the East before the German occupation. Though based on some studies …, we know that approximately 1,000,000 -1,100,000 Jews managed to escape from the Eastern regions later occupied by Germans”.2564 There was a different situation in the territories incorporated into the Soviet Union only in 1939-1940, and which were rapidly captured by the Germans at the start of the “Blitzkreig”.  The lightning-speed German attack allowed almost no chance for escape; meanwhile the Jewish population of these “buffer” zones numbered 1,885,000 (“Western Jews”) in June 1941.2565 And “only a small number of these Jews managed to escape or were evacuated. It is believed that the number is … about 10-12 percent.”2566 Thus, within the new borders of the USSR, by the most optimistic assessments, approximately 2,226,000 Jews (2,000,000 Eastern, 226,000 Western Jews) escaped the German occupation and 2,739,000 Jews (1,080,000 Easterners and 1,659,000 Westerners) remained in the occupied territories. Evacuees and refugees from the occupied and threatened territories were sent deep into the rear, “with the majority of Jews resettled beyond the Ural
2562Моше Каганович. Дер идишер онтайл ин партизанербавегунг фун Совет-Руссланд. Рим, 1948, с. 188. — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Советском Союзе…, с. 45-46. 2563М. Куповецкий. Людские потери еврейского населения в послевоенных границах СССР в годы Великой Отечественной войны // Вестник Еврейского Университета в Москве. 1995, № 2(9), с. 137, 145, 151. 2564Ицхак Арад. Холокауст: Катастрофа европейского еврейства (1933-1945): Сб. статей. Иерусалим: Яд Ва-Шем, 1990 (далее — И. Арад. Холокауст), с. 62. 2565М. Куповецкий. Людские потери еврейского населения… // Вестник Еврейского Унта…, 1995, № 2(9), с. 145. 2566И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 61.
Mountains, in particular in Western Siberia and also in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan”.2567 The materials of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (EAK) contain the following statement: “At the beginning of the Patriotic War about one and half million Jews were evacuated to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian Republics.”2568 This figure does not include the Volga, the Ural and the Siberian regions. (However, the Jewish Encyclopedia argues that “a 1,500,000 figure” is a great exaggeration.”2569) Still, there was no organized evacuation into Birobidzhan, and no individual refugees relocated there, although, because of the collapse of Jewish kolkhozes, the vacated housing there could accommodate up to 11,000 families.2570 At the same time, “the Jewish colonists in the Crimea were evacuated so much ahead of time that they were able to take with them all livestock and farm implements”; moreover, “it is well-known that in the spring of 1942, Jewish colonists from Ukraine established kolkhozes in the Volga region” How? Well, the author calls it the “irony of Nemesis”: they were installed in place of German colonists who were exiled from the German Republic of the Volga by Soviet government order starting on August 28, 1941.2571 As already noted, all the cited wartime and postwar sources agree in recognizing the energy and the scale of the organized evacuation of Jews from the advancing German army. But the later sources, from the end of the 1940s, began to challenge this. For example, we read in a 1960s source: “a planned evacuation of Jews as the most endangered part of the population did not take place anywhere in Russia” (italicized as in the source).2572 And twenty years later we read this: after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, “contrary to the rumors that the government allegedly evacuated Jews from the areas under imminent threat of German occupation, no such measures had ever taken place. … the Jews were abandoned to their fate. When applied to the citizen of Jewish nationality, the celebrated `proletarian internationalism´ was a dead letter”.2573 This statement is completely unfair. Still, even those Jewish writers, who deny the “beneficence” of the government with respect to Jewish evacuation, do recognize its magnitude. “Due to the specific social structure of the Jewish population, the percentage of Jews among the evacuees should have been much higher than the percentage of Jews in the urban population”.2574 And indeed it was. The Evacuation Council was established on June 24, 1941, just two days after the German invasion 2567С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 181. 2568Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина: Власть и антисемитизм*. М.: Международные отношения, 2001, с. 431. 2569Краткая Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — КЕЭ). Иерусалим: Общество по исследованию еврейских общин, 1988. Т. 4, с. 167. 2570С.М. Шварц. Биробиджан // КРЕ-2, с. 187. 2571И. Шехтман. Советское еврейство в германо-советской войне // ЕМ-2, с. 226, 227. 2572Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 144. 2573С. Цирюльников. СССР, евреи и Израиль // Время и мы: Международный журнал литературы и общественных проблем. Нью-Йорк, 1987, № 96, с. 151-152. 2574И. Шехтман. Советское еврейство в германо-советской войне // ЕМ-2, с. 224.
(Shvernik was the chairman and Kosygin and Pervukhin were his deputies) .Its priorities were announced as the following: to evacuate first and foremost the state and party agencies with personnel, industries, and raw materials along with the workers of evacuated plants and their families, and young people of conscription age. Between the beginning of the war and November 1941, around 12 million people were evacuated from the threatened areas to the rear.2575 This number included, as we have seen, 1,000,000 to 1,100,000 Eastern Jews and more than 200,000 Western Jews from the soon-to-be-occupied areas. In addition, we must add to this figure a substantial number of Jews among the people evacuated from the cities and regions of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR, that is, Russia proper) that never fell to the Germans (in particular,  those from Moscow and Leningrad). Solomon Schwartz states: “The general evacuation of state agencies and industrial enterprises with a significant portion of their staff (often with families) was in many places very extensive. Thanks to the social structure of Ukrainian Jewry with a significant percentages of Jews among the middle and top civil servants, including the academic and technical intelligentsia and the substantial proportion of Jewish workers in Ukrainian heavy industry, the share of Jews among the evacuees was larger than their share in the urban (and even more than in the total) population.”2576 The same was true for Byelorussia. In the 1920s and early 1930s it was almost exclusively Jews, both young and old, who studied at “various courses, literacy classes, in day schools, evening schools and shift schools. … This enabled the poor from Jewish villages to join the ranks of industrial workers. Constituting only 8.9% of the population of Byelorussia, Jews accounted for 36% of the industrial workers of the republic in 1930.”2577 “The rise of the percentage of Jews among the evacuees”, continues S. Schwartz, “was also facilitated by the fact that for many employees and workers the evacuation was not mandatory. … Therefore, many, mostly non-Jews, remained were they were.” Thus, even the Jews, “who did not fit the criteria for mandatory evacuation … had better chances to evacuate”.2578 However, the author also notes that “no government orders or instructions on the evacuation specifically of Jews or reports about it ever appeared in the Soviet press”. “There simply were no orders regarding the evacuation of Jews specifically. It means that there was no purposeful evacuation of Jews.”2579 Keeping in mind the Soviet reality, this conclusion seems ill grounded and, in any case, formalistic. Indeed, reports about mass evacuation of the Jews did not appear in the Soviet press. It is easy to understand why. First, after the pact
2575Советский тыл в первый период Великой Отечественной войны: [Сб.]. М., 1988, с. 139. 2576С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 53. 2577Л.Л. Мининберг. Советские евреи в науке и промышленности СССР в период Второй мировой войны (1941 -1945). М., 1995, с. 13. 2578С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 53. 2579Там же, с. 46, 53.
with Germany, the Soviet Union suppressed information about Hitler’s policies towards Jews, and when the war broke out, the bulk of the Soviet population did not know about the mortal danger the German invasion posed for Jews. Second, and this was probably the more-important factor – German propaganda vigorously denounced “Judeo-Bolshevism” and the Soviet leadership undoubtedly realized that they gave a solid foundation to this propaganda during the 1920s and 1930s, so how could they now declare openly and loudly that the foremost government priority must be to save Jews? This could only have been seen as playing into Hitler’s hands. Therefore, there were no public announcements that among the evacuees “Jews were over-represented”. “The evacuation orders did not mention Jews”, yet “during the evacuation the Jews were not discriminated” against;2580 on the contrary they were evacuated by all available means, but in silence, without press coverage inside the USSR. However, propaganda for foreign consumption was a different matter. For example, in December 1941, after repulsing the German onslaught on Moscow, Radio Moscow – not in the Russian language, of course, but “in Polish”, and on “the next day, five more times in German, compared the successful Russian winter counteroffensive with the Maccabean miracle” and told the German-speaking listeners  repeatedly that “precisely during Hanukkah week”, the 134th Nuremberg Division, named after the city “where the racial legislation originated” was destroyed.2581 In 1941- 42 the Soviet authorities readily permitted worshippers to overfill synagogues in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kharkov and to openly celebrate the Jewish Passover of 1942.2582 We cannot say that the domestic Soviet press treated German atrocities with silence. Ilya Ehrenburg and others (like the journalist Kriger) got the go-ahead to maintain and inflame hatred towards Germans throughout the entire war and not without mentioning the burning topic of Jewish suffering, yet without a special stress on it. Throughout the war Ehrenburg  thundered, that “the German is a beast by his nature”, calling for “not sparing even unborn Fascists” (meaning the murder of pregnant German women), and he was checked only at the very end, when the war reached the territory of Germany and it became clear that the Army had embraced only too well the party line of unbridled revenge against all Germans. However these is no doubt that the Nazi policy of extermination of the Jews, its predetermination and scope, was not sufficiently covered by the Soviet press, so that even the Jewish masses in the Soviet Union could hardly realize the extent of their danger. Indeed, during the entire war, there were few public statements about the fate of Jews under German occupation. Stalin in his speech on Nov. 6, 1941 (the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution) said: “The
2580Н. Арад. Отношение советского руководства к Холокосту // Вестник Еврейского Унта…, 1995, № 2(9), с. 23. 2581И. Шехтман. Советское еврейство в германо-советской войне // ЕМ-2, с. 238. 2582Там же, с. 237.
Nazis are … as eager to organize medieval Jewish pogroms as the Tsarist regime was. The Nazi Party is the party … of medieval reaction and the BlackHundred pogroms.”2583 “As far as we know”, an Israeli historian writes, “it was the only case during the entire war when Stalin publicly mentioned the Jews”.2584 On January 6, 1942, in a note of the Narkomindel [People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs] composed by Molotov and addressed to all states that maintained diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, the Jews are mentioned as one of many suffering Soviet nationalities, and shootings of Jews in Kiev, Lvov, Odessa, Kamenetz-Podolsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol, Kerch were highlighted and the numbers of victims listed. “The terrible massacre and pogroms were inflicted by German invaders in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. … A significant number of Jews, including women and children, were rounded up; before the execution all of them were stripped naked and beaten and then … shot by sub-machine guns. Many mass murders occurred … in other Ukrainian cities, and these bloody executions were directed in particular against unarmed and defenseless Jews from the working class.”2585 On December 19, 1942, the Soviet government issued a declaration that mentioned Hitler’s “special plan for total extermination of the Jewish population in the occupied territories of Europe” and in Germany itself; “although relatively small, the Jewish minority of the Soviet population … suffered particularly hard from the savage bloodthirstiness of the Nazi monsters”. But some sources point out that this declaration was somewhat forced; it came out two days after a similar declaration was made by the western Allies, and it was not republished in the Soviet press as was always done during newspaper campaigns. In 1943, out of seven reports of the Extraordinary State Commission for investigation of Nazi atrocities (such as extermination of Soviet prisoners of war and the destruction of cultural artifacts of our country), only one report referred to murders of Jews – in the Stavropol region, near Mineralnye Vody.2586 And in March 1944 in Kiev, while making a speech about the suffering endured by Ukrainians under occupation, Khrushchev “did not mention Jews at all”.2587 Probably this is true. Indeed, the Soviet masses did not realize the scale of the Jewish Catastrophe. Overall, this was our common fate – to live under the impenetrable shell of the USSR and be ignorant of what was happening in the outside world. However, Soviet Jews could not be all that unaware about the events in Germany. “In the mid-thirties the Soviet Press wrote a lot about German anti-Semitism… A novel by Leon Feichtwanger The Oppenheim Family and the movie based on the book, as well as another movie, Professor
2583Доклад Председателя Государственного Комитета Обороны тов. И.В. Сталина на торжественном заседании Московского Совета депутатов трудящихся 6 ноября 1941 года // Правда, 1941, 7 ноября, с. 1-2. 2584И. Арад. Отношение советского руководства к Холокосту // Вестник Еврейского Унта…, 1995, № 2(9), с. 17. 2585Известия, 1942, 7 января, с. 1-2. 2586С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…*, с. 138-145. 2587Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 146.
Mamlock, clearly demonstrated the dangers that Jews were facing.”2588 Following the pogroms of Kristallnacht, Pravda published an editorial “The Fascist Butchers and Cannibals” in which it strongly condemned the Nazis: “The whole civilized world watches with disgust and indignation the vicious massacre of the defenseless Jewish population by German fascists. … [With the same feelings] the Soviet people watch the dirty and bloody events in Germany. … In the Soviet Union, along with the capitalists and landowners, all sources of anti-Semitism had been wiped out.”2589 Then, throughout the whole November, Pravda printed daily on its front pages reports such as “Jewish pogroms in Germany”, “Beastly vengeance on Jews”, “The wave of protests around the world against the atrocities of the fascist thugs”. Protest rallies against antiJewish policies of Hitler were held in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tbilisi, Minsk, Sverdlovsk, and Stalin. Pravda published a detailed account of the town hall meeting of the Moscow intelligentsia in the Great Hall of the Conservatory, with speeches given by A.N. Tolstoy, A. Korneychuk, L. Sobolev; People’s Artists [a Soviet title signifying  prominence in the Arts] A.B. Goldenweiser and S.M. Mikhoels, and also the text of a resolution adopted at the meeting: “We, the representatives of the Moscow intelligentsia … raise our voice in outrage and condemnation against the Nazi atrocities and inhuman acts of violence against the defenseless Jewish population of Germany. The fascists beat up, maim, rape, kill and burn alive in broad daylight people who are guilty only of belonging to the Jewish nation.”2590 The next day, on November 29, under the headline “Soviet intelligentsia is outraged by Jewish pogroms in Germany”, Pravda produced the full coverage of rallies in other Soviet cities. However, from the moment of the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact in August of 1939, not only criticism of Nazi policies but also any information about persecution of the Jews in European countries under German control vanished from the Soviet press. “A lot of messages … were reaching the Soviet Union through various channels – intelligence, embassies, Soviet journalists. … An important source of information… was Jewish refugees who managed to cross the Soviet border. However, the Soviet media, including the Jewish press, maintained silence.”2591 “When the Soviet-German War started and the topic of Nazi anti-Semitism was raised again, many Jews considered it to be propaganda”, argues a modern scholar, relying on the testimonies of the Catastrophe  survivors, gathered over a half of century. “Many Jews relied on their own life experience rather than on radio, books and newspapers. The image of Germans did not change in the minds of most Jews since WWI. And back then the Jews considered the German
2588С. Швейбиш. Эвакуация и советские евреи в годы Катастрофы // Вестник Еврейского Ун-та…, 1995, № 2(9), с. 47. 2589Правда, 1938, 18 ноября, с. 1. 2590Правда, 1938, 28 ноября, с. 2-3. 2591И. Арад. Отношение советского руководства к Холокосту // Вестник Еврейского Унта… , 1995, № 2(9), с. 15-16.
regime to be one of the most tolerant to them.”2592 “Many Jews remembered, that during the German occupation in 1918, the Germans treated Jews better than they treated the rest of the local population, and so the Jews were reassured.”2593 As a result, “in 1941, a significant number of Jews remained in the occupied territories voluntarily”. And even in 1942, “according to the stories of witnesses… the Jews in Voronezh, Rostov, Krasnodar, and other cities waited for the front to roll through their city and hoped to continue their work as doctors and teachers, tailors and cobblers, which they believed were always needed…. The Jews could not or would not evacuate for purely material reasons as well.”2594 While the Soviet press and radio censored the information about the atrocities committed by the occupiers  against the Jews, the Yiddish newspaper Einigkeit (“Unity”), the official publication of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (EAK), was allowed to write about it openly from the summer of 1942. Apparently, the first step in the establishment of EAK was a radiomeeting in August 1941of “representatives of the Jewish people” (S. Mikhoels, P. Marques, J. Ohrenburg, S. Marshak, S. Eisenstein and other celebrities participated.) For propaganda purposes, it was broadcast to the US and other Allied countries. “The effect on the Western public surpassed the most optimistic expectations of Moscow. … In the Allied countries the Jewish organizations sprang up to raise funds for the needs of the Red Army.” Their success prompted the Kremlin to establish a permanent Jewish Committee in the Soviet Union. “Thus began the seven-year-long cooperation of the Soviet authorities with global Zionism.”2595 The development of the Committee was a difficult process, heavily dependent on the attitudes of government. In September 1941, an influential former member of the Bund, Henryk Ehrlich, was released from the prison to lead that organization. In 1917, Ehrlich had been a member of the notorious and then omnipotent Executive Committee of the Petrosoviet. Later, he emigrated to Poland where he was captured by the Soviets in 1939. He and his comrade, Alter, who also used to be a member of the Bund and was also a native of Poland, began preparing a project that aimed to mobilize international Jewish opinion, with heavier participation of foreign rather than Soviet Jews. “Polish Bund members were intoxicated by their freedom…  and increasingly acted audaciously. Evacuated to Kuibyshev [Samara] along with the metropolitan bureaucracy, they contacted Western diplomatic representatives, who were relocated there as well,… suggesting, in particular, to form a Jewish Legion in the USA to fight on the Soviet-German front”. “The things have gone so far that the members of the Polish Bund … began planning a trip to the West on their own”. In addition, both Bund activists “presumptuously assumed (and did not 2592С. Швейбиш. Эвакуация и советские евреи в годы Катастрофы // Вестник Еврейского Ун-та…, 1995, № 2(9), с. 47-48. 2593КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 223. 2594Там же, с. 49. 2595В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 231.
hide it) that they could liberally reform the Soviet political system”. In December 1941, both overreaching leaders of the Committee were arrested (Ehrlich hanged himself in prison; Alter was shot).2596 Yet during the spring of 1942, the project of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was revived, and a meeting “of the representatives of Jewish people” was called forth again.  A Committee was elected, although this time exclusively from Soviet Jews. Solomon Mikhoels became its Chairman and Shakhno Epstein, “Stalin’s eye `in Jewish affairs´ and a former fanatical Bundist and later a fanatical Chekist, became its Executive Secretary”.  Among others, its members were authors David Bergelson, Peretz Markish, Leib Kvitko, and Der Nistor; scientists Lina Shtern and Frumkin, a member of the Academy. Poet Itzik Fefer became the Vice President.2597 (The latter was a former Trotskyite who was pardoned because he composed odes dedicated to Stalin; he was “an important NKVD agent”, and, as a “proven secret agent”, he was entrusted with a trip to the West.2598) The task of this Committee was the same: to influence international public opinion, and “to appeal to the ‘Jews all over the world’ but in practice it appealed primarily to the American Jews”,2599 building up sympathy and raising financial aid for the Soviet Union. (And it was the main reason for Mikhoels’ and Fefer’s trip to the United States in summer 1943, which coincided with the dissolution of Comintern. It was a roaring success, triggering rallies in 14 cities across the US: 50,000 people rallied in New York City alone. Mikhoels and Fefer were received by former Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and by Albert Einstein.2600) Yet behind the scenes the Committee was managed by Lozovskiy-Dridzo, the Deputy Head of the Soviet Information Bureau (Sovinformbureau); the Committee did not have offices in the Soviet Union and could not act independently; in fact, it was “not so much a fundraising tool for the Red Army as an arm of … pro-Soviet propaganda abroad.”2601
Some Jewish authors argue that from the late 1930s there was a covert but persistent removal of Jews from the highest ranks of Soviet leadership in all spheres of administration. For instance, D. Shub writes that by 1943 not a single Jew remained among the top leadership of the NKVD, though “there were still many Jews in the Commissariat of Trade, Industry and Foods. There were also quite a few Jews in the Commissariat of Public Education and in the Foreign
2596Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 233-235. 2597Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 148. 2598Павел Судоплатов. Спецоперации: Лубянка и Кремль: 1930-1950 годы. М.: ОЛМАПресс, 1997, с. 465, 470. 2599С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 239. 2600Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 237-239. 2601С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 166-170.
Office.”2602 A modern researcher reaches a different conclusion based on archival materials that became available in 1990s: “During the 1940s, the role of Jews in punitive organs remained highly visible, coming to the end only in the postwar years during the campaign against cosmopolitanism.”2603 However, there are no differences of opinion regarding the relatively large numbers of Jews in the top command positions in the Army. The Jewish World reported that “in the Red Army now [during the war], there are over a hundred Jewish generals” and it provided a “small randomly picked list of such generals”, not including “generals from the infantry”. There were 17 names (ironically, “Major-General of Engineering Service Frenkel Naftaliy Aronovich” of GULag was also included).2604 A quarter of a century later, another collection of documents confirmed that there were no less than a hundred Jewish generals in the middle of the war and provided additional names.2605 (However, the volume unfortunately omitted the “Super-General” Lev Mekhlis – the closest and most trusted of Stalin’s henchmen from 1937 to 1940; from 1941 he was the Head of Political Administration of the Red Army. Ten days after the start of the war, Mekhlis arrested a dozen of the highest generals of the Western Front.2606 He is also infamous for his punitive measures during the SovietFinnish War and then later at Kerch in the Crimea.) The Short Jewish Encyclopedia provides an additional list of fifteen Jewish generals. Recently, an Israeli researcher has published a list of Jewish generals and admirals (including those who obtained the rank during the war). Altogether, there were 270 generals and admirals! This is not only “not a few” – this is an immense number indeed. He also notes four wartime narkoms (people’s commissars): in addition to Kaganovich, these were Boris Vannikov (ammunition), Semien Ginzburg (construction), Isaac Zaltzman (tank industry) and several heads of main military administrations of the Red Army; the list also contains the names of four Jewish army commanders, commanders of 23 corps, 72 divisions, and 103 brigades.2607 “In no army of the Allies, not even in the USA’s, did Jews occupy such high positions, as in the Soviet Army”, Dr. I. Arad writes.2608 No, “the displacement of Jews from the top posts” during the war did not happen. Nor had any supplanting yet manifested itself in general aspects of Soviet life. In 1944 (in the USA) a famous Socialist Mark Vishnyak stated that “not even hardcore 2602Д. Шуб. Евреи в русской революции // ЕМ-2, с. 145. 2603Л.Ю. Кричевский. Евреи в аппарате ВЧК-ОПТУ в 20-е годы // Евреи и русская революция: Материалы и исследования / Ред.-сост. О.В. Будницкий. Москва; Иерусалим: Гешарим, 1999, с. 344. 2604Е. Сталинский. Евреи в Красной армии // ЕМ-2, с. 243-245. 2605Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина //КРЕ-2, с. 143. 2606В. Анфилов. Как «оправдался» Сталин // Родина, 1991, № 6-7, с. 31; Российская Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — РЕЭ). 2-е изд., испр. и доп. М., 1995. Т. 2, с. 276277. 2607Арон Абрамович. В решающей войне: Участие и роль евреев СССР в войне против нацизма. Тель-Авив, 1992. Т. 2, с. 536-578. 2608И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 93.
enemies of the USSR can say that its government cultivates anti-Semitism”.2609 Back then – it was undoubtedly true. According to Einigkeit (from February 24, 1945, almost at the end of the war), “for courage and heroism in combat”… 63,374 Jews were awarded orders and medals”, and 59 Jews became the Heroes of the Soviet Union. According to the Warsaw Yiddish language newspaper Volksstimme in 1963 the number of the Jews awarded military decorations in WWII was 160,772, with 108 Heroes of the Soviet Union among them.2610 In the early 1990s, an Israeli author provided a list of names with dates of confirmation , in which 135 Jews are listed as Heroes of the Soviet Union and 12 Jews are listed as the full chevaliers of the Order of Glory.2611 We find similar information in the three-volume Essays on Jewish Heroism.2612 And finally, the latest archival research (2001) provides the following figures: “throughout the war 123,822 Jews were awarded military decorations”;2613 thus, among all nationalities of the Soviet Union, the Jews are in fifth place among the recipients of decorations, after Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Tatars. I. Arad states that “anti-Semitism as an obstacle for Jews in their military careers, in promotion to higher military ranks and insignia did not exist in the Soviet Army during the war”.2614 Production on the home front for the needs of the war was also highly rewarded. A huge influx of  Soviet Jews into science and technology during the 1930s had borne its fruit during the war. Many Jews worked on the design of new types of armaments and instrumentation, in the manufacturing of warplanes, tanks, and ships, in scientific research, construction and development of industrial enterprises, in power engineering, metallurgy, and transport. For their work from 1941 to 1945 in support of the front, 180,000 Jews were awarded decorations. Among them were scientists, engineers, administrators of various managerial levels and workers, including more than two hundred who were awarded the Order of Lenin; nearly three hundred Jews were awarded the Stalin Prize in science and technology. During the war, 12 Jews became Heroes of Socialist Labor, eight Jews became full members of the Academy of Science in physics and mathematics, chemistry and technology, and thirteen became Member-Correspondents of the Academy.2615
2609М. Вишняк. Международная конвенция против антисемитизма // ЕМ-2, с. 98. 2610Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 143. 2611А. Абрамович. В решающей войне. Т. 2, с. 548-555. 2612Очерки еврейского героизма: В 3 т. / Сост. Г.С. Шапиро, С.Л. Авербух. Киев; ТельАвив, 1994-1997. 2613Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 245 (со ссылкой на бывш. Центральный партийный архив при ЦК КПСС, ныне РГАСПИ. Ф. 17, оп. 125, ед. хр. 127, л. 220). 2614И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 128. 2615Л.Л. Мининберг. Советские евреи в науке и промышленности…, с. 18, 444-445, 452, 474-475.
Many authors, including S. Schwartz, note that “the role of Jews in the war was systematically concealed” along with a deliberate policy of “silence about the role of Jews in the war”. He cites as a proof the works of prominent Soviet writers such as K. Simonov (Days and Nights) and V. Grossman (The People Is Immortal) where “among a vast number of surnames of soldiers, officers, political officers and others, there is not a single Jewish name.”2616 Of course, this was due to censoring restrictions, especially in case of Grossman. (Later, military personnel with Jewish names re-appeared in Grossman’s essays.) Another author notes that postcards depicting a distinguished submarine commander, Israel Fisanovich, were sold widely throughout the Soviet Union.2617 Later, such publications were extended; and an Israeli researcher lists another 12 Jews, Heroes of the Soviet Union, whose portraits were mass reproduced on postal envelopes.2618 Even through I’m a veteran of that war, I have not researched it through books much, nor was I collecting materials or have written anything about it. But I saw Jews on the front. I knew brave men among them. For instance, I especially want to mention two fearless antitank fighters: one of them was my university friend Lieutenant Emanuel Mazin; another was young ex-student soldier Borya Gammerov (both were wounded in action). In my battery among 60 people two were Jews – Sergeant Ilya Solomin, who fought very well through the whole war, and Private Pugatch, who soon slipped away to the Political Department. Among twenty officers of our division one was a Jew – Major Arzon, the head of the supply department. Poet Boris Slutsky was a real soldier, he used to say: “I’m full of bullet holes”. Major Lev Kopelev, even though he served in the Political Department of the Army (responsible for counter-propaganda aimed at enemy troops), he fearlessly threw himself in every possible  fighting melee. A former “Mifliyetz” Semyon Freylih, a brave officer, remembers: “The war began … . So I was off to the draft board and joined the army” without graduating from the University, as “we felt ashamed not to share the hardships of millions”.2619 Or take Lazar Lazarev, later a wellknown literary critic, who as a young man fought at the front for two years until both his hands were mauled: “It was our duty and we would have been ashamed to evade it. … it was life – the only possible one under the circumstances, the only decent choice for the people of my age and education”.2620 Boris Izrailevich Feinerman wrote in 1989 in response to an article in Book Review, that as a 17year-old, he volunteered in July 1941 for an infantry regiment; in October, his both legs were wounded and he was taken prisoner of war; he escaped and walked out of the enemy’s encirclement on crutches – then of course he was
2616С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 154-156. 2617Е. Сталинский. Евреи в Красной армии // ЕМ-2, с. 250. 2618А. Абрамович. В решающей войне. Т. 2, с. 562. 2619S. Freilikh, Istoriia odnogo boia... [Histoire d'un combat], Kinostsenarii [Scénarios de films]. M., 1990, n" 3. p. 132. 2620L Lazarev, Zapiski pojilogo tcheloveka [Notes d'un homme âgé], in Znamia, 2001, n"6, p. 167.
imprisoned for `treason´” – but in 1943 he managed to get out of the camp by joining a penal platoon; he fought there and later became a machine gunner of the assault infantry unit in a tank regiment and was wounded two more times. We can find many examples of combat sacrifice in the biographical volumes of the most recent Russian Jewish Encyclopedia. Shik Kordonskiy, a commander of a mine and torpedo regiment, “smashed his burning plane into the enemy cargo ship”; he was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union. Wolf Korsunsky, “navigator of the air regiment”, became a Hero of the Soviet Union too. Victor Hasin, “a Hero of the Soviet Union … squadron commander … participated in 257 air skirmishes, personally shot down a number of the enemy’s airplanes”, destroyed another 10 on the ground; he was shot down over “the enemy occupied territory, and spent several days reaching and crossing the front lines. He died in hospital from his wounds”. One cannot express it better! The Encyclopedia contains several dozens names of Jews who died in combat. Yet, despite these examples of unquestioned courage, a Jewish scholar bitterly notes “the widespread belief in the army and in the rear that Jews avoided the combat units”.2621 This is a noxious and painful spot. But, if you wish to ignore the painful spots, do not attempt to write a book about ordeals that were endured together. In history, mutual national perceptions do count. “During the last war, antiSemitism in Russia increased significantly. Jews were unjustly accused of evasion of military service and in particular, of evasion of front line service.”2622 “It was often said about Jews that instead of fighting, they stormed the cities of Alma-Ata and Tashkent.”2623 Here is a testimony of a Polish Jew who fought in the Red Army: “In the army, young and old had been trying to convince me that … there was not a single Jew on the front . `We’ve got to fight for them.´ I was told in a `friendly´ manner: `You’re crazy. All your people are safely sitting at home. How come you are here on the front?´”2624 I. Arad writes: “Expressions such as `we are at the front, and the Jews are in Tashkent´, `one never sees a Jew at the front line´could be heard among soldiers and civilians alike.”2625 I testify: Yes, one could hear this among the soldiers on the front. And right after the war – who has not experienced that? – a painful feeling remained among our Slavs that our Jews could have acted in that war in a more self-sacrificing manner, that among the lower ranks on the front the Jews could have been more represent. These feelings are easy to blame (and they are blamed indeed) on unwarranted Russian anti-Semitism.(However, many sources blame that on the
2621S. Schwartz, Les Juifs en Union soviétique..., p. 154. 2622Dr. Jerzy Gliksman. Jewish Exiles in Soviet Russia (1939-1943). part 2, July 1947, p. 17, in Archives du Comité juif américain de New York, cité d'après S. Schwartz, p. 157. 2623PEJ. t. 8. p. 223. 2624Rachel Erlich. Summary Report on Eighteen Intensive Interviews with Jewish DP's from Poland and the Soviet Union, October 1948. p. 27 [Archives du Comité juif américain de New York], cité d'après S. Schwartz. p. 192. 2625И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 128.
“German propaganda” digested by our public. What a people! They are good only to absorb propaganda – be it Stalin’s or Hitler’s – and they are good for nothing else!) Now that it is half a century passed since then. Isn’t it time to unscramble the issue? There are no official data available on the ethnic composition of the Soviet Army during the Second World War. Therefore, most studies on Jewish participation in the war provide only estimates, often without citation of sources or explanation of the methods of calculation. However, we can say that the 500,000 figure had been firmly established by 1990s: “The Jewish people supplied the Red Army with nearly 500,000 soldiers.”2626 “During World War II, 550,000 Jews served in the Red Army.”2627 The Short Jewish Encyclopedia notes that “only in the field force of the Soviet Army alone there were over 500,000 Jews”, and “these figures do not include Jewish partisans who fought against Nazi Germany”.2628 The same figures are cited in Essays on Jewish heroism, in Abramovich’s book In the Deciding War and in other sources. We came across only one author who attempted to justify his assessment by providing readers with details of his reasoning. It was an Israeli researcher, I. Arad, in his the above cited book on the Catastrophe. Arad concludes that “the total number of Jews who fought in the ranks of the Soviet Army against the German Nazis was no less than 420,000430,000”.2629 He includes in this number “the thousands of Jewish partisans who fought against the German invaders in the woods” (they were later incorporated into the regular army in 1944 after the liberation of Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine. At the same time, Arad believes that during the war “approximately 25,000-30,000 Jewish partisans operated in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union”.2630 (The Israeli Encyclopedia in the article “Anti-Nazi Resistance” provides a lower estimate: “In the Soviet Union, more than 15,000 Jews fought against the Nazis in the underground organizations and partisan units.”2631) In his calculations, Arad assumes that the proportion of mobilized Jews was the same as the average percentage of mobilized for the entire population of USSR during the war, i.e., 13.0-13.5%.  This would yield 390,000-405,000 Eastern Jews (out of the total of slightly more than 3 million), save for the fact that “in certain areas of Ukraine and Byelorussia, the percentage of Jewish population was very high; these people were not mobilized because the region was quickly captured by the Germans”. However,
2626Е. Сталинский. Евреи в Красной армии // ЕМ-2, с. 240. 2627А. Воронель. Люди на войне, или ещё раз об уникальности Израиля // “22”: Общественно-политический и литературный журнал еврейской интеллигенции из СССР в Израиле. Тель-Авив, 1984, № 34, с. 146. 2628КЕЭ, т. 1, статья «Военная служба», с. 690; т. 4, ст. «Катастрофа», с. 159. В ст. «Советский Союз» (т. 8, с. 224) КЕЭ даёт цифру 450 тыс. евреев в составе Советской армии, и ещё 25-30 тыс. в партизанских отрядах. 2629И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 102. 2630И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 86. 2631КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 441.
the author assumes that in general the mobilization “shortfall” of the Eastern Jews was small and that before the Germans came, the majority of males of military age were still mobilized – and thus he settles on the number of 370,000-380,000 Eastern Jews who served in the army. Regarding Western Jews, Arad reminds us that in 1940 in Western Byelorussia and Western Ukraine, during the mobilization of conscripts whose year of birth fell between of 1919 and 1922, approximately 30,000 Jewish youths were enlisted, but the Soviet government considered the soldiers from the newly annexed western regions as “unreliable”; therefore, almost all of them were transferred to the Labor Army after the war began. “By the end of 1943, the process of remobilization of those who were previously transferred into the Labor Army began … and there were Jews among them.” The author mentions that 6,000 to 7,000 Western Jewish refugees fought in the national Baltic divisions. By adding the Jewish partisans incorporated into the army in 1944, the author concludes: “we can establish that at least 50,000 Jews from the territories annexed to the USSR, including those mobilized before the war, served in the Red Army”. Thus I. Arad comes to the overall number of 420,000-430,000 Jews in military service between 1941 and 1944.2632 According to Arad, the number of 500,000 soldiers commonly used in the sources would imply a general base (500,000 conscripts taken out of the entire Jewish population) of 3,700,000-3,850,000 people. According to the abovementioned sources, the maximum estimate for the total number of Eastern and Western Jews who escaped the German occupation was 2,226,000, and even if we were to add to this base all 1,080,000 Eastern Jews who remained under the occupation, as though they had had time to supply the army with all the people of military age right before the arrival of the Germans – which was not the case – the base would still lack a half-million people. It would have also meant that the success of the evacuation, discussed above, was strongly underestimated. There is no such contradiction in Arad’s assessment. And though its individual components may require correction,2633 overall, it surprisingly well matches with the hitherto unpublished data of the Institute of the Military History, derived from the sources of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense. According to that data, the numbers of mobilized personnel during the Great Patriotic War were as follows: Russians – 19,650,000 Ukrainians – 5,320,000 Byelorussians – 964,000 Tartars – 511,000 Jews – 434,000 Kazakhs – 341,000
2632И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 98-102. 2633Скажем, нам представляется, что число «восточников», которых успели мобилизовать до прихода немцев, было несколько меньше, зато средний процент армейцев от всего населения СССР, был, возможно, несколько выше, чем рассчитанный И. Арадом.
Uzbeks – 330,000 Others – 2,500,0002634 Thus, contrary to the popular belief, the number of Jews in the Red Army in WWII was proportional to the size of mobilization base of the Jewish population. The fraction of Jews that participated in the war in general matches their proportion in the population. So then, were the people’s impressions of the war really prompted by antiSemitic prejudice? Of course, by the beginning of the war, a certain part of the older and middle-aged population still bore scars from the 1920s and 1930s. But a huge part of the soldiers were young men who were born at the turn of the revolution or after it; their perception of the world differed from that of their elders dramatically. Compare: during the First World War, in spite of the spy mania of the military authorities in 1915 against the Jews who resided near the front lines, there was no evidence of anti-Semitism in the Russian army. In 1914, out of 5 million Russian Jews,2635 “by the beginning of WWI, about 400,000 Jews were inducted into the Russian Imperial Army, and by the end of war in 1917 this number reached 500,000”.2636 This means that at the outbreak of the war every twelfth Russian Jew fought in the war, while by the end, one out of ten. And in World War II, every eighth or seventh. So, what was the matter? It can be assumed that the new disparities inside the army played their role with their influences growing stronger and sharper as one moved closer to the deadly frontline. In 1874 Jews were granted equal rights with other Russian subjects regarding universal conscription, yet during WWI until the February Revolution, Tsar Alexander II’s  law which stipulated that Jews could not advance above the rank of petty officer (though it did not apply to military medics) was still enforced. Under the Bolsheviks, the situation had changed radically, and during the WWII, as the Israeli Encyclopedia summarizes, “compared to other nationalities of the Soviet Union, Jews were disproportionately represented among the senior officers, mainly because of the higher percentage of college graduates among them”.2637 According to I. Arad’s evaluation, “the number of Jews-commissars and political officers in various units during the war was relatively higher than number of Jews on other Army positions”; “at the very least, the percentage of Jews in the political leadership of the army” was “three times higher than the overall percentage of Jews among the population of the USSR during that period”.2638 In addition, of course, Jews were “among the head professionals of military medicine … among the heads of health departments on several fronts. … Twenty-six Jewish generals of the
2634В ныне выходящей Военной энциклопедии едва ли не впервые приведены сведения об общем числе мобилизованных в годы Великой Отечественной Войны — 30 миллионов. См.: Военная энциклопедия: В 8 т. М.: Воениздат, 2001. Т. 5. с. 182. 2635КЕЭ, т. 7, с. 385. 2636КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 686. 2637Там же, с. 686-687. 2638И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 118.
Medical Corps and nine generals of the Veterinary Corps were listed in the Red Army.” Thirty-three Jewish generals served in the Engineering Corps.2639 Of course, Jewish doctors and military engineers occupied not only high offices: “among the military medical staff… there were many Jews (doctors, nurses, orderlies).”2640 Let us recall that in 1926 the proportion of Jews among military doctors was 18.6% while their proportion in the male population was 1.7%,2641 and this percentage could only increase during the war because of the large number of female Jewish military doctors: “traditionally, a high percentage of Jews in the Soviet medicine and engineering professions naturally contributed to their large number in the military units.”2642 However undeniably important and necessary for final victory these services were, what mattered is that not everybody could survive to see it. Meanwhile an ordinary soldier, glancing back from the frontline, saw all too clearly that even the second and third echelons behind the front were also considered participants in the war: all those deep-rear headquarters, suppliers, the whole Medical Corps from medical battalion to higher levels, numerous behind-the-lines technical units and, of course, all kinds of service personnel there, and, in addition, the entire army propaganda machine, including touring ensembles, entertainment troupes – they all were considered war veterans and, indeed, it was apparent to everyone that the concentration of Jews was much higher there than at the front lines. Some write that “among Leningrad’s veteran-writers”, the Jews comprised “by most cautious and perhaps understated assessment… 31%”2643 – that is, probably more. Yet how many of them were editorial staff? As a rule, editorial offices were situated 10-15 kilometers behind the frontline, and even if a correspondent happened to be at the front during hostilities, nobody would have forced him “to hold the position”, he could leave immediately, which is a completely different psychology. Many trumpeted their status as “front-liners”, but writers and journalists are guilty of it the most. Stories of prominent ones deserve a separate dedicated analysis. Yet how many others – not prominent and not famous – front-liners settled in various newspaper publishing offices at all levels – at fronts, armies, corps and divisions? Here is one episode. After graduating from the machine gun school, Second Lieutenant Alexander Gershkowitz was sent to the front. But, after a spell at the hospital, while “catching up with his unit, at a minor railroad station he sensed the familiar smell of printing ink, followed it – and arrived at the office of a division-level newspaper, which serendipitously was in need of a front-line correspondent”. And his fate had changed. (But what
2639А. Абрамович. В решающей войне. Т. 2, с 531-532. 2640КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 232. 2641И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 96. 2642Там же, с. 126. 2643Ю. Колкер. [Рецензия на справочник «Ленинградские писатели-фронтовики. 19411945» / Сост. В. Бахтин. Л.: Сов. писатель, [1985] // Страна и мир: Обществ.политический, экономический и культурно-философский журнал. Мюнхен, 1987, № 5, с. 138.
about catching up with his infantry unit?) “In this new position, he traveled thousands of kilometers of the war roads.”.2644 Of course, military journalists perished in the war as well. Musician Michael Goldstein, who got “the white ticket” (“not fit”) because of poor vision, writes of himself: “I always strived to be at the front, where I gave thousands of concerts, where I wrote a number of military songs and where I often dug trenches.”2645 Often? Really? A visiting musician – and with a shovel in his hands? As a war veteran, I say – an absolutely incredible picture. Or here is another amazing biography. Eugeniy Gershuni “in the summer of 1941… volunteered for a militia unit, where he soon organized a small pop ensemble”. Those, who know about these unarmed and even non-uniformed columns marching to certain death, would be chilled. Ensemble, indeed! In September 1941, “Gershuni with his group of artists from the militia was posted to Leningrad’s Red Army Palace, where he organized and headed a troopentertainment circus”. The story ends “on May 9, 1945, when Gershuni’s circus threw a show on the steps of the Reichstag in Berlin”.2646 Of course, the Jews fought in the infantry and on the frontline. In the middle of the 1970s, a Soviet source provides data on the ethnic composition of two hundred infantry divisions between January 1, 1943 and January 1, 1944 and compares it to the population share of each nationality within the preSeptember 1939 borders of the USSR..  During that period, Jews comprised respectively 1.5% and 1.28% in those divisions, while their proportion in the population in 1939 was 1.78%,2647 Only by the middle of 1944, when mobilization began in the liberated areas, did the percentage of Jews fall to 1.14% because almost all Jews in those areas were exterminated. It should be noted here that some audacious Jews took an even more fruitful and energetic part in the war outside of the front. For example, the famous “Red Orchestra” of Trepper and Gurevich spied on Hitler’s regime from within until the fall of 1942, passing to the Soviets extremely important strategic and tactical information. (Both spies were arrested and held by the Gestapo until the end of the war; then, after liberation, they were arrested and imprisoned in the USSR – Trepper for 10 years and Gurevich for 15 years.2648) Here is another example: a Soviet spy, Lev Manevich, was ex-commander of a special detachment during the Civil War and later a long-term spy in Germany, Austria, and Italy. In 1936, he was arrested in Italy, but he managed to communicate with Soviet intelligence even from the prison. In 1943, while imprisoned in the Nazi camps under the name of Colonel Starostin, he participated in the anti-fascist underground. In 1945, he was liberated by the Americans but died before returning to the USSR (where he could have easily 2644С. Черток // Русская мысль, 1992, 1 мая, с. 18. 2645М. Гольдштейн // Русская мысль, 1968, 1 августа, с. 10. 2646РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 296-297. 2647А.П. Артемьев. Братский боевой союз народов СССР в Великой Отечественной войне. М.: Мысль, 1975, с. 58-59. 2648КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 1051; П. Судоплатов. Спецоперации, с. 217-228.
faced imprisonment). Only 20 years later, in 1965, was he awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously.2649 (One can also find very strange biographies, such as Mikhail Scheinman’s. Since the 1920s he served as a provincial secretary of the Komsomol; during the most rampant years of the Union of Militant Atheists he was employed at its headquarters; then he graduated from the Institute of Red Professors and worked in the press department of the Central Committee of the VKPb. In 1941, he was captured by the Germans and survived the entire war in captivity – a Jew and a high-level commissar at that! And despite categorical evidence of his culpability from SMERSH’s [Translator’s note: a frontline counter-intelligence organization, literally, “Death to Spies”] point of view, how could he possibly surviveif he was not a traitor? Others were imprisoned for a long time for lesser “crimes”.Yet nothing happened, and in 1946 he was already safely employed in the Museum of the History of Religion and then in the Institute of History at the Academy of Science.2650) Yet such anecdotal evidence cannot make up a convincing argument for either side and there are no reliable and specific statistics nor are they likely to surface in the future. Recently, an Israeli periodical has published some interesting testimony. When a certain Jonas Degen decided to volunteer for a Komsomol platoon at the beginning of the war, another Jewish youth, Shulim Dain, whom Jonas invited to come and join him, replied “that it would be really fortunate if the Jews could just watch the battle from afar since this is not their war, though namely this war may inspire Jews and help them to rebuild Israel. When I am conscripted to the army, I’ll go to war. But to volunteer? Not a chance.”2651 And Dain was not the only one who thought like this; in particular, older and more experienced Jews may have had  similar thoughts. And this attitude, especially among the Jews devoted to the eternal idea of Israel, is fully understandable. And yet it is baffling, because the advancing enemy was  the arch enemy of the Jews, seeking above all else to annihilate them. How could Dain and likeminded individuals remain neutral? Did they think that the Russians had no other choice but to fight for their land anyway? One modern commentator (I know him personally – he is a veteran and a former camp inmate) concludes: “Even among the older veterans these days I have not come across people with such clarity of thought and depth of understanding” as Shulim Dain (who perished at Stalingrad) possessed: “two fascist monsters interlocked in deadly embrace”. Why should we participate in that?2652 Of course, Stalin’s regime was not any better than Hitler’s. But for the wartime Jews, these two monsters could not be equal! If that other monster 2649КЕЭ, т. 5, с. 83; Очерки еврейского героизма. Т. 1, с. 405-430. 2650РЕЭ, т. 3, с. 383. 2651В. Каган. Правильное решение* // “22”. Ноябрь 1990-Январь 1991, № 74, с. 252. (Это — рецензия на книгу: И. Деген. Из дома рабства. Тель-Авив: Мория, 1986.) 2652Там же, с. 252.
won, what could then have happened to the Soviet Jews? Wasn’t this war the personal Jewish war? wasn’t it their own Patriotic War – to cross arms with the deadliest enemy in the entire Jewish history? And those Jews who perceived the war as their own and who did not separate their fate from that of Russians, those like Freylikh, Lazarev and Fainerman, whose thinking was opposite to Shulim Dain’s, they fought selflessly. God forbid, I do not explain the Dain’s position as “Jewish cowardice”. Yes, the Jews demonstrated survivalist prudence and caution throughout the entire history of the Diaspora, yet it is this history that explains these qualities. And during the Six-Day War and other Israeli wars, the Jews have proven their outstanding military courage. Taking all that into consideration, Dain’s position can only be explained by a relaxed feeling of dual citizenship – the very same that back in 1922, Professor Solomon Lurie from Petrograd considered as one of the main sources of anti-Semitism (and its explanation) – a Jew living in a particular country belongs not only to that country, and his loyalties become inevitably split in two. The Jews have “always harbored nationalist attitudes, but the object of their nationalism was Jewry, not the country in which they lived”.2653 Their interest in this country is partial. After all, they – even if many of them only unconsciously – saw ahead looming in the future their very own nation of Israel.
And what about the rear? Researchers are certain about the “growth of antiSemitism … during the war.”2654 “The curve of anti-Semitism in those years rose sharply again, and anti-Semitic manifestations … by their intensity and prevalence dwarfed the anti-Semitism of the second half of the 1920s.”2655 “During the war, anti-Semitism become commonplace in the domestic life in the Soviet deep hinterland.”2656 During evacuation, “so-called domestic anti-Semitism, which had been dormant since the establishment of the Stalinist dictatorship in the early 1930s, was revived against the background of general insecurity and breakdown and other hardships and deprivations, engendered by the war.”2657 This statement refers mainly to Central Asia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, “especially when the masses of wounded and disabled veterans rushed there from the front”,2658 and exactly there the masses of the evacuated Jews lived, including Polish Jews, who were “torn from their traditional environment” by deportation and who had no experience of Soviet kolkhozes. Here are the testimonies of Jewish evacuees 2653С.Я. Лурье. Антисемитизм в древнем мире. Тель-Авив: Сова, 1976, с. 77 [1-е изд. — Пг.: Былое, 1922]. 2654В. Александрова. Евреи в советской литературе // КРЕ-2, с. 297. 2655С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 197. 2656С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 6. 2657Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 242. 2658С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 157.
to Central Asia recorded soon after the war: “The low labor productivity among evacuated Jews … served in the eyes of the locals as a proof of allegedly characteristic Jewish reluctance to engage in physical labor.”2659 “The intensification of [anti-Semitic] attitudes was fueled by the Polish refugees’ activity on the commodity markets.”2660 “Soon they realized that their regular incomes from the employment in industrial enterprises, kolkhozes, and cooperatives … would not save them from starvation and death. To survive, there was only one way – trading on the market or `speculation´”; therefore, it was the Soviet reality that drove “Polish Jews to resort to market transactions whether they liked it or not.”2661 “The non-Jewish population of Tashkent was ill-disposed toward the Jewish evacuees from Ukraine. Some said, `Look at these Jews. They always have a lot of money.´”2662 “Then there were incidents of harassment and insults of Jews, threats against them, throwing them out of bread queues.”2663 “Another group of Russian Jews, mostly bureaucrats with a considerable amount of cash, inspired the hostility of the locals for inflating the already high market prices.”2664 The author proceeds confidently to explain these facts thus: “Hitler’s propaganda reaches even here”,2665 and he is not alone in reaching such conclusions. What a staggering revelation! How could Hitler’s propaganda victoriously reach and permeate all of Central Asia when it was barely noticeable at the front with all those rare and dangerous-to-touch leaflets thrown from airplanes, and when all private radio receiver sets were confiscated throughout the USSR? No, the author realizes that there “was yet another reason for the growth of anti-Semitic attitudes in the districts that absorbed evacuees en masse. There, the antagonism between the general mass of the provincial population and the privileged bureaucrats from the country’s central cities manifested itself in a subtle form. Evacuation of organizations from those centers into the hinterland provided the local population with an opportunity to fully appreciate the depth of social contrast.”2666
2659Dr. Jerzy Gliksman. Jewish Exiles in Soviet Russia (1939-1943). Part 2, July 1947, p. 6 // Архив Американского Еврейского Комитета в Нью-Йорке. — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 157. 2660С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 191. 2661Rachel Erlich. Summary Report on Eighteen Intensive Interviews with Jewish DP’s from Poland and the Soviet Union. October 1948, p. 9f // Архив Американского Еврейского Комитета в Нью-Йорк — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 192. 2662Там же, р. 26. — Цит. по: С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…, с. 194. 2663Dr. Jerzy Gliksman. Jewish Exiles…, p. 17. — Цит. по: С.Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 159. 2664Там же, р. 15. — Цит. по: С.Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе… , с. 159. 2665С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 157. 2666Там же, с. 158.
Then there were those populations that experienced the German invasion and occupation, for instance, the Ukrainians. Here is  testimony published in March 1945 in the bulletin of the Jewish Agency for Palestine: “The Ukrainians meet returning Jews with hostility. In Kharkov, a few weeks after the liberation, Jews do not dare to walk alone on the streets at night. … There have been many cases of beating up Jews on the local markets. … Upon returning to their homes, Jews often found only a portion of their property, but when they complained in courts, Ukrainians often perjured themselves against them.”2667 (The same thing happened everywhere; besides it was useless to complain in court anyway: many of the returning non-Jewish evacuees found their old places looted as well.) “There are many  testimonies about hostile attitudes towards Jews in Ukraine after its liberation from the Germans.”2668 “As a result of the German occupation, anti-Semitism in all its forms has significantly increased in all social strata of Ukraine, Moldova and Lithuania.”2669 Indeed, here, in these territories, Hitler’s anti-Jewish propaganda did work well during the years of occupation, and yet the main point was the same: that under the Soviet regime the Jews had merged with the ruling class – and so a secret German report from the occupied territories in October 1941 states that the “animosity of the Ukrainian population against Jews is enormous…. they view the Jews … as informants and agents of the NKVD, which organized the terror against the Ukrainian people.”2670 Generally speaking, early in the war, the “German’s plan was to create an impression that it was not Germans but the local population that began extermination of the Jews”; S. Schwartz believes that, unlike the reports of the German propaganda press, “the German reports not intended for publication are reliable.”2671 He profusely quotes a report by SS Standartenführer F. Shtoleker to Berlin on the activities of the SS units under his command (operating in the Baltic states, Byelorussia and in some parts of the RSFSR) for the period between the beginning of the war in the East and October 15, 1941: “Despite facing considerable difficulties, we were able to direct local anti-Semitic forces toward organization of anti-Jewish pogroms within several hours after arrival [of German troops]. … It was necessary to show that … it was a natural reaction to the years of oppression by Jews and communist terror. …  It was equally important to establish for the future as an undisputed and provable fact that … the local people have resorted to the most severe measures against Bolsheviks
2667Bulletin of the Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. March 1945, p. 2-3. — Цит. по: С.Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 160. 2668С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 184. 2669Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина // КРБ-2, с. 359. 2670Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg. 14 November 1945-1 October 1946. — Nuremberg, 1949, Vol. 38, p. 292-293, Doc. 102-R. — Цит. по: С.Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 101. 2671С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 88.
and Jews on their own initiative, without demonstrable evidence for any guidance from the German authorities.”2672 The willingness of the local population for such initiatives varied greatly in different occupied regions. “In the tense atmosphere of the Baltics, the hatred of Jews reached a boiling point at the very moment of Hitler’s onslaught against Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941.”2673 The Jews were accused of collaboration with the NKVD in the deportation of Baltic citizens. The Israeli Encyclopedia quotes an entry from the diary of Lithuanian physician E. BudvidayteKutorgene: “All Lithuanians, with few exceptions, are unanimous in their hatred of Jews.”2674 Yet, the Standartenführer reports that “to our surprise, it was not an easy task … to induce a pogrom there”. This was achieved with the help of Lithuanian partisans, who exterminated 1,500 Jews in Kaunas during the night of June 26 and 2,300 more in the next few days; they also burned the Jewish quarter and several synagogues.2675 “Mass executions of the Jews were conducted by the SS and the Lithuanian police on October 29 and November 25, 1941.” About 19,000 of the 36,000 Jews of Kaunas were shot in the Ninth Fort.2676 “In many Lithuanian cities and towns, all of the Jewish population was exterminated by local Lithuanian police under German control in the autumn of 1941.”2677 “It was much harder to induce the same self-cleaning operations and pogroms in Latvia”, reports the Standartenführer, because there “the entire national leadership, especially in Riga, was destroyed or deported by the Bolsheviks.”2678 Still, on July 4, 1941, Latvian activists in Riga “set fire to several synagogues into which the Jews had been herded. … About 2,000 died”; in the first days of occupation, locals assisted in executions by the Germans of several thousand Jews in the Bikernieki forest near Riga, and in late October and in early November in the shootings of about 27,000 Jews at a nearby railway station Rumbula.2679 In Estonia, “with a small number of Jews in the country, it was not possible to induce pogroms”, reports the officer.2680 (Estonian Jews were destroyed without pogroms: “In Estonia, about 2,000 Jews remained. Almost all male Jews were executed in the first weeks of the occupation by the Germans and their Estonian collaborators. … The rest were interned in the
2672Trial of the Major War Criminals… Vol. 37, p. 672-683, Doc. 180-L. — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 89. 2673И. Гар. Евреи в Прибалтийских странах под немецкой оккупацией // КРЕ-2, с. 97. 2674КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 218. 2675Trial of the Major War Criminals… Vol. 37, р. 672-683, Doc. 180-L. Цит. по: С.Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 89-90. 2676КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 218. 2677КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 218. 2678Trial of the Major War Criminals… Vol. 37, p. 672-683, Doc. 180-L. — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 90. 2679КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 218. 2680Trial of the Major War Criminals… Vol.37, p. 672-683, Doc. 180-L. — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 89-90.
concentration camp Harku near Tallinn”, and by the end of 1941 all of them were killed.2681 But the German leadership was disappointed in Byelorussia. S. Schwartz: “the failure of the Germans to draw sympathy from the broad masses of locals to the cause of extermination of Jews… is completely clear from secret German documents … The population invariably and consistently refrains from any independent action against the Jews.”2682 Still, according to eyewitnesses in Gorodok in the Vitebsk oblast, when the ghetto was liquidated on Oct. 14, 1941, the “Polizei were worse than the Germans”;2683 and in Borisov, the “Russian police” (it follows in the report that they were actually imported from Berlin) “destroyed within two days [October 20 and 21, 1941] 6,500 Jews. Importantly, the author of the report notes that the killings of Jews were not met with sympathy from the local population: `Who ordered that… How is it possible…? Now they kill the Jews, and when will be our turn? What have these poor Jews done? They were just workers. The really guilty ones are, of course, long gone. ´”2684 And here is a report by a German “trustee”, a native Byelorussian from Latvia: “In Byelorussia, there is no Jewish question. For them, it’s a purely German business, not Byelorussian… Everybody sympathizes with and pities the Jews, and they look at Germans as barbarians and murderers of the Jews [Judenhenker]: a Jew, they say, is a human being just like a Byelorussian.”2685 In any case, S. Schwartz writes that “there were no national Byelorussian squads affiliated with the German punitive units, though there were Latvian, Lithuanian, and `mixed´ squads; the latter enlisted some Byelorussians as well.”2686 The project was more successful in Ukraine. From the beginning of the war, Hitler’s propaganda incited the Ukrainian nationalists (“Bandera?s Fighters”) to take revenge on the Jews for the murder of Petliura by Schwartzbard.2687 The organization of Ukrainian Nationalists of Bandera-Melnik (OUN) did not need to be persuaded: even before the Soviet-German War, in April 1941, it adopted a resolution at its Second Congress in Krakow, in which paragraph 17 states: “The Yids in the Soviet Union are the most loyal supporters of the ruling Bolshevik regime and the vanguard of Moscow imperialism in Ukraine… The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists considers the Yids as the pillar of the Moscow-Bolshevik regime, while educating the masses that Moscow is the main enemy.”2688 Initially, the “Bandera Fighters” allied with the 2681Уничтожение евреев СССР в годы немецкой оккупации (1941-1944): Сб. документов и материалов / Под ред. И. Арада. Иерусалим: Яд Ва-Шем, 1991, с. 12. 2682Trial of the Major War Criminals… Vol. 37, p. 672-683, Doc. 180-L. — Цит. по: С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 91-92. 2683КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 218. 2684С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм…*, с. 134-135. 2685Там же*, с. 132. 2686Там же*, с. 93. 2687И. Шехтман. Советское еврейство в германо-советской войне // ЕМ-2, с. 235-236. 2688А. Вайс. Отношение некоторых кругов украинского национального движения к евреям в период Второй мировой войны* // Вестник Еврейского Ун-та…, 1995, №
Germans against the Bolsheviks. During the whole of 1940 and the first half of 1941, the OUN leadership was preparing for a possible war between Germany and the USSR. “Then the main base of the OUN was the Generalgouvernement, i. e., the Nazi-occupied Poland. … Ukrainian militias were being created there, and lists of suspicious persons, with Jews among them, were compiled. Later these lists were used by Ukrainian nationalists to exterminate Jews. … `Mobile units´ for the East Ukraine were created and battalions of Ukrainian Nationalists,  `Roland´ and `Nakhtigal´, were formed in the German Army.” The OUN arrived in the East [of Ukraine] together with the frontline German troops. During the summer of 1941 “a wave of Jewish pogroms rolled over Western Ukraine. … with participation of both Melnyk’s and of Bandera’s troops. As a result of these pogroms, around 28,000 Jews were killed.”2689 Among OUN documents, there is a declaration by J. Stetzko (who in July 1941 was named the head of the Ukrainian government): “The Jews help Moscow to keep Ukraine in slavery, and therefore, I support extermination of the Yids and the need to adopt in Ukraine the German methods of extermination of Jewry.” In July, a meeting of Bandera’s OUN leaders was held in Lvov, where, among other topics, policies toward Jews were discussed. There were various proposals: to build the policy “on the principles of Nazi policy before 1939. … There were proposals to isolate Jews in ghettoes. … But the most radical proposal was made by Stepan Lenkavskiy, who stated: `Concerning the Jews we will adopt all the measures that will lead to their eradication.´”2690 And until the relations between the OUN and the Germans deteriorated (because Germany did not recognize the self-proclaimed Ukrainian independence), there were “many cases, especially in the first year … when Ukrainians directly assisted the Germans in the extermination of Jews.” “Ukrainian auxiliary police, recruited by the Germans mainly in Galicia and Volhynia,”2691 played a special role. “In Uman in September 1941, Ukrainian city police under command of several officers and sergeants of the SS shot nearly 6,000 Jews”; and in early November 6 km outside Rovno, “the SS and Ukrainian police slaughtered 21,000 Jews from the ghetto.”2692 However, S. Schwartz writes: “It is impossible to figure out which part of the Ukrainian population shared an active anti-Semitism with a predisposition toward pogroms. Probably quite a large part, particularly the more cultured strata, did not share these sentiments.” As for the original part of the Soviet Ukraine [within the pre-September 1939 Soviet borders], “no evidence for the `spontaneous´ pogroms by Ukrainians could be found in the
2(9), с. 106. 2689А. Вайс. Отношение некоторых кругов украинского национального движения к евреям в период Второй мировой войны* // Вестник Еврейского Ун-та…, 1995, № 2(9), с. 105-106, 107. 2690Там же, с. 106-107. 2691С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 98, 101. 2692КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 218.
secret German reports from those areas.”2693 In addition, “Tatar militia squads in the Crimea were exterminating Jews also.”2694 Regarding indigenous Russian regions occupied by the Germans, the Germans “could not exploit anti-Russian sentiments and the argument about Moscow’s imperialism was unsustainable; and the argument for any JudeoBolshevism, devoid of support in local nationalism, largely lost its appeal”; among the local Russian population “only relatively few people actively supported the Germans in their anti-Jewish policies of extermination.”2695 A researcher on the fate of Soviet Jewry concludes: the Germans in Lithuania and Latvia “had a tendency to mask their pogromist activities, bringing to the fore extermination squads made up of pogromists emerging under German patronage from the local population”; but “in Byelorussia, and to a considerable extent even in Ukraine and especially in the occupied areas of the RSFSR”, the Germans did not succeed as “the local population had mostly disappointed the hopes pinned on it” – and there “the Nazi exterminators had to proceed openly.”2696
Hitler’s plan for the military campaign against the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) included “special tasks to prepare the ground for political rule, with the character of these tasks stemming from the all-out struggle between the two opposing political systems.” In May and June 1941, the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht issued more specific directives, ordering execution without trial of persons suspected of hostile action against Germany (and of political commissars, partisans, saboteurs and Jews in any case) in the theater of Barbarossa.2697 To carry out special tasks in the territory of the USSR, four special groups (Einsatzgruppen) were established within the Security Service (SS) and the Secret Police (Gestapo), that had operational units (Einsatzkommando) numerically equal to companies. The Einsatzgruppen advanced along with the front units of the German Army, but reported directly to the Chief of Security of the Third Reich, Reinhard Heydrich. Einsatzgruppe A (about 1000 soldiers and SS officers under the command of SS Standartenführer Dr. F. Shtoleker) of Army Group “North” operated in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the Leningrad and Pskov oblasts. Group B (655 men, under the command of Brigadenführer A. Neveu) was attached to Army Group “Centre”, which was advancing through Byelorussia and the Smolensk Oblast toward Moscow. Group C (600, Standartenführer E. Rush) was attached 2693С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 99. 2694А.А. Гольдштейн. Судьба евреев в оккупированной немцами Советской России // КРЕ-2, с. 74. 2695С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 102. 2696Там же, с. 74, 90. 2697Уничтожение евреев СССР в годы немецкой оккупации*, с. 4.
to Army Group “South” and operated in the Western and Eastern Ukraine. Group D (600 men under the command of SS Standartenführer Prof. O. Ohlendorf) was attached to the 11th Army and operated in Southern Ukraine, the Crimea, and in the Krasnodar and Stavropol regions. Extermination of Jews and commissars (“carriers of the Judeo-Bolshevik ideology”) by the Germans began from the first days of the June 1941invasion, though they did so “somewhat chaotically and with an extremely broad scope.”2698 “In other German-occupied countries, elimination of the Jewish population proceeded gradually and thoroughly. It usually started with legal restrictions, continued with the creation of ghettos and introduction of forced labor and culminated in deportation and mass extermination. In Soviet Russia, all these elements were strangely intermingled in time and place. In each region, sometimes even within one city, various methods of harassment were used… there was no uniform or standardized system.”2699 Shooting of Jewish prisoners of war could happen sometimes right upon capture and sometimes later in the concentration camps; civilian Jews were sometimes first confined in ghettoes, sometimes in forced-labor camps, and in other places they were shot outright on the spot, and still in other places the “gas vans” were used. “As a rule, the place of execution was an anti-tank ditch, or just a pit.”2700 The numbers of those exterminated in the cities of the Western USSR by the winter of 1941 (the first period of extermination) are striking: according to the documents, in Vilnius out of 57,000 Jews who had lived there about 40,000 were killed; in Riga out of 33,000 – 27,000; in Minsk out of the 100,000-strong ghetto – 24,000 were killed (there the extermination continued until the end of occupation); in Rovno out of 27,000 Jews – 21,000 were killed; in Mogilev about 10,000 Jews were shot; in Vitebsk – up to 20,000; and near Kiselevich village nearly 20,000 Jews from Bobruisk were killed; in Berdichev – 15,000.2701 By late September, the Nazis staged a mass extermination of Jews in Kiev. On September 26 they distributed announcements around the city requiring all Jews, under the penalty of death, to report to various assembly points. And Jews, having no other option but to submit, gathered obediently, if not trustingly, altogether about 34,000; and on September 29 and 30, they were methodically shot at Babi Yar, putting layer upon layers of corpses in a large ravine.Hence there was no need to dig any  graves – a giant hecatomb! According to the official German announcement, not questioned later, 33,771 Jews were shot over the course of two days. During the next two years of the
2698С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 65. 2699И. Шехтман. Советское еврейство в германо-советской войне // ЕМ-2, с. 229. 2700КЕЭ*, т. 8, с. 218. 2701От источника к источнику цифры несколько разнятся. Статистику этих истреблений, вероятно, невозможно установить точно. См. уже цитированную статью А.А. Гольдштейна в «Книге о Русском Еврействе» (1968); сборник И. Арада «Уничтожение евреев СССР в годы немецкой оккупации» (1991); статью «Советский Союз» в КЕЭ, т. 8 (1996).
Kiev occupation, the Germans continued shootings in their favorite and so convenient ravine. It is believed that the number of the executed – not only Jews – had reached, perhaps, 100,000.2702 The executions at Babi Yar have become a symbol in world history. People shrug at the cold-blooded calculation, the business-like organization, so typical for the 20th century that crowns  humanistic civilization: during the “savage” Middle Ages people killed each other en masse only in a fit of rage or in the heat of battle. It should be recalled that within a few kilometers from Babi Yar, in the enormous Darnitskiy camp, tens of thousands Soviet prisoners of war, soldiers and officers, died during the same months: yet we do not commemorate it properly, and many are not even aware of it. The same is true about the more than two million Soviet prisoners of war who perished during the first years of the war. The Catastrophe  persistently raked its victims from all the occupied Soviet territories. In Odessa on October 17, 1941, on the second day of occupation by German and Romanian troops, several thousand Jewish males were killed, and later, after the bombing of the Romanian Military Office, the total terror was unleashed: about 5,000 people, most of them Jews and thousands of others, were herded into a suburban village and executed there. In November, there was a mass deportation of people into the Domanevskiy District, where “about 55,000 Jews” were shot in December and January of 1942.2703 In the first months of occupation, by the end of 1941, 22,464 Jews were killed in Kherson and Nikolayev; 11,000  in Dnepropetrovsk; 8,000  in Mariupol’ and almost as many in Kremenchug; about 15,000  in Kharkov’s Drobytsky Yar; and more than 20,000  in Simferopol’ and Western Crimea.2704 By the end of 1941, the German High Command had realized that the “blitz” had failed and that a long war loomed ahead. The needs of the war economy demanded a different organization of the home front. In some places, the German administration slowed down the extermination of Jews in order to exploit their manpower and skills. “As the result, ghettoes survived in large cities like Riga, Vilnius, Kaunas, Baranovichi, Minsk, and in other, smaller ones, where many Jews worked for the needs of the German war economy.”2705 Yet the demand for labor that prolonged the existence of these large ghettoes did not prevent resumption of mass killings in other places in the spring of 1942: in Western Byelorussia, Western Ukraine, Southern Russia and the Crimea, 30,000 Jews were deported from the Grodno region to Treblinka and Auschwitz; Jews of Polesia, Pinsk, Brest-Litovsk, and Smolensk were eradicated. During the 1942 summer offensive, the Germans killed local Jews immediately upon
2702КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 275. 2703КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 125-126. 2704Уничтожение евреев СССР в годы немецкой оккупации, с. 16. 2705Там же, с. 17.
arrival: the Jews of Kislovodsk, Pyatigorsk and Essentuki were killed in antitank ditches near Mineralni’ye Vody; thus died evacuees to Essentuki from Leningrad and Kishinev. Jews of Kerch and Stavropol were exterminated as well. In Rostov-on-Don, recaptured by the Germans in late July 1942, all the remaining Jewish population was eradicated by August 11. In 1943, after the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, the outcome of the war became clear. During their retreat, the Germans decided to exterminate all remaining Jews. On June 21, 1943 Himmler ordered the liquidation of the remaining ghettoes. In June 1943, the ghettoes of Lvov, Ternopol, and Drohobych were liquidated. After the liberation of Eastern Galicia in 1944, “only 10,000 to 12,000 Jews were still alive, which constituted about 2% of all Jews who had remained under occupation.” Able-bodied Jews from ghettoes in Minsk, Lida, and Vilnius were transferred to concentration camps in Poland, Estonia, and Latvia, while the rest were shot. Later, during the summer, 1944 retreat from the Baltics, some of the Jews in those camps were shot, and some were moved into camps in Germany (Stutthof et al.).2706 Destined for extermination, Jews fought for survival: underground groups sprang up in many ghettoes to organize escapes. Yet after a successful breakout, a lot depended on the local residents – that they not betray the Jews, provide them with non-Jewish papers, shelter and food. In the occupied areas, Germans sentenced those helping Jews to death.2707 “But everywhere, in all occupied territories, there were people who helped the Jews. … Yet there were few of them. They risked their lives and the lives of their families. … There were hundreds, maybe thousands of such people. But the majority of local populations just watched from a distance.”2708 In Byelorussia and the occupied territories of the RSFSR, where local populations were not hostile to the remaining Jews and where no pogroms ever occurred, the local population provided still less assistance to Jews than in Europe or even “in Poland, the country … of widespread, traditional, folk anti-Semitism.”2709 (Summaries of many similar testimonies can be found in books by S. Schwartz and I. Arad.) They plausibly attribute this not only to the fear of execution but also to the habit of obedience to authorities (developed over the years of Soviet rule) and to not meddling in the affairs of others. Yes, we have been so downtrodden, so many millions have been torn away from our midst in previous decades, that any attempt at resistance to government power was foredoomed, so now Jews as well could not get the support of the population. But even well-organized Soviet underground and guerrillas directed from Moscow did little to save the doomed Jews. Relations with the Soviet guerrillas were a specially acute problem for the Jews in the occupied territories. Going
2706Там же, с. 26-27. 2707КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 222. 2708Уничтожение евреев СССР в годы немецкой оккупации, с. 24. 2709С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 108.
into the woods, i.e., joining up with a partisan unit, was a better lot for Jewish men than waiting to be exterminated by the Germans. Yet hostility to the Jews was widespread and often acute among partisans, and “there were some Russian detachments that did not accept Jews on principle. They alleged that Jews cannot and do not want to fight”, writes a former Jewish partisan Moshe Kaganovich. A non-Jewish guerilla recruit was supplied with weapons, but a Jew was required to provide his own, and sometimes it was traded down. “There is pervasive enmity to Jews among partisans. … in some detachments anti-Semitism was so strong that the Jews felt compelled to flee from such units.”2710 For instance, in 1942 some two hundred Jewish boys and girls fled into the woods from the ghetto in the shtetl of Mir in Grodno oblast, and “there they encountered anti-Semitism among Soviet guerrillas, which led to the death of many who fled; only some of them were able to join guerrilla squads.”2711 Or another case: A guerrilla squad under the command of Ganzenko operated near Minsk. It was replenished “mainly with fugitives from the Minsk ghetto”, but the “growing number of Jews in the unit triggered anti-Semitic clashes” – and then the Jewish part of the detachment broke away.2712 Such actions on the part of the guerrillas were apparently spontaneous, not directed from the center. According to Moshe Kaganovich, from the end of 1943 “the influence of moredisciplined personnel arriving from the Soviet Union” had increased “and the general situation for [the Jews had] somewhat improved.”2713 However, he complains that when a territory was liberated by the advancing regular Soviet troops and the partisans were sent to the front (which is true, and everybody was sent indiscriminately), it was primarily Jews who were sent2714 – and that is incredible. However, Kaganovich writes that Jews were sometimes directly assisted by the partisans. There were even “partisan attacks on small towns in order to save Jews” from ghettoes and [concentration] camps, and that “Russian partisan movement helped fleeing Jews to cross the front lines. … [And in this way they] smuggled across the frontline many thousands of Jews who were hiding in the forests of Western Byelorussia escaping the carnage.” A partisan force in the Chernigov region accepted “more than five hundred children from Jewish family camps in the woods, protected them and took care of them… After the Red Army liberated Sarny (on Volyn), several squads broke the front and sent Jewish children to Moscow.” (S. Schwartz believes that “these reports are greatly exaggerated. [But] they are based on real facts, [and they] merit attention.”2715)
2710Там же*, с. 121-124. 2711КЕЭ, т. 5, с. 366. 2712РЕЭ, т. 1, с. 499. 2713С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…*, с. 127. 2714Там же*, с. 129. 2715С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…*, с. 125-126.
Jewish family camps originated among the Jewish masses fleeing into the woods and there “were many thousands of such fugitives.” Purely Jewish armed squads were formed specifically for the protection of these camps. (Weapons were purchased through third parties from German soldiers or policemen.) Yet how to feed them all? The only way was to take food as well as shoes and clothing, both male and female, by force from the peasants of surrounding villages. “The peasant was placed between the hammer and the anvil. If he did not carry out his assigned production minimum, the Germans burned his household and killed him as a `partisan´. On the other hand, guerrillas took from him by force all they needed”2716 – and this naturally caused spite among the peasants: they are robbed by Germans and robbed by guerrillas – and now in addition even the Jews rob them? And the Jews even take away clothes from their women? In the spring of 1943, partisan Baruch Levin came to one such family camp, hoping to get medicines for his sick comrades. He remembers: Tuvia Belsky “seemed like a legendary hero to me. … Coming from the people, he managed to organize a 1,200-strong unit in the woods. … In the worst days when a Jew could not even feed himself, he cared for the sick, elderly and for the babies born in the woods.” Levin told Tuvia about Jewish partisans: “We, the few survivors, no longer value life. Now the only meaning of our lives is revenge. It is our duty – to fight the Germans, wipe out all of them to the last one.” I talked for a long time; … offered to teach Belsky’s people how to work with explosives, and all other things I have myself learned. But my words, of course, could not change Tuvia’s mindset… `Baruch, I would like you to understand one thing. It is precisely because there are so few of us left, it is so important for me that the Jews survive. And I see this as my purpose; it is the most important thing for me.´”2717 And the very same Moshe Kaganovich, as late as in 1956, wrotein a book published in Buenos Aires, “in peacetime, years after the devastating defeat of Nazism” – shows, according to S. Schwartz, “a really bloodthirsty attitude toward the Germans, an attitude that seems to be influenced by the Hitler plague….  he glorifies putting German prisoners to `Jewish death´ by Jewish partisans according to the horrible Nazi’ examples or excitedly recalls the speech by a commander of a [Jewish] guerrilla unit given before the villagers of a Lithuanian village who were gathered and forced to kneel  by partisans in the square after a punitive raid against that village whose population had actively assisted the Germans in the extermination of Jews (several dozen villagers were executed during that raid).”2718 S. Schwartz writes about this with a restrained but clear condemnation. Yes, a lot of things happened. Predatory killings call for revenge, but each act of revenge, tragically, plants the seeds of new retribution in the future.
2716Там же*, с. 121, 128. 2717Уничтожение евреев СССР в годы немецкой оккупации, с. 386-387. 2718С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…*, с. 132.
The different Jewish sources variously estimate the total losses among Soviet Jews during the Second World War (within the post-war borders). “How many Soviet Jews survived the war?”, asks S. Schwartz and offers this calculation: 1,810,000-1,910,000 (excluding former refugees from the Western Poland and Romania, now repatriated ). “The calculations imply that the number of Jews by the end of the war was markedly lower than two million and much lower than the almost universally accepted number of three million.”2719 So, the total number of losses according to Schwarz was 2,800,000-2,900,000. In 1990 I. Arad provided his estimate: “During the liberation of Germanoccupied territories … the Soviet Army met almost no Jews. Out of the 2,750,000-2,900,000 Jews who remained under the Nazi rule [in 1941] in the occupied Soviet territories, almost all died.” To this figure Arad suggests adding “about 120,000 Jews – Soviet Army soldiers who died on the front, and about 80,000 shot in the POW camps”, and “tens of thousands of Jews [who died] during the siege of Leningrad, Odessa and other cities, and in the deep rear … because of harsh living conditions in the evacuation.”2720 Demographer M. Kupovetskiy published several studies in the 1990s, where he used newly available archival materials, made some corrections to older data and employed an improved technique for ethnodemographic analysis. His result was that the general losses of Jewish population within the postwar USSR borders in 1941-1945 amounted to 2,733,000 (1,112,000 Eastern and 1,621,000 Western Jews), or 55% of 4,965,000 – the total number of Jews in the USSR in June 1941. This figure, apart from the victims of Nazi extermination, includes the losses among the military and the guerrillas, among civilians near the front line, during evacuation and deportation, as well as the victims of Stalin’s camps during the war. (However, the author notes, that quantitative evaluation of each of these categories within the overall casualty figure is yet to be done.2721) Apparently, the Short Jewish Encyclopedia agrees with this assessment as it provides the same number.2722 The currently accepted figure for the total losses of the Soviet population during the Great Patriotic War is 27,000,000 (if the “method of demographic balance” is used, it is 26,600,0002723) and this may still be underestimated. We must not overlook what that war was for the Russians. The war rescued not only their country, not only Soviet Jewry, but also the entire social system of the Western world from Hitler. This war exacted such sacrifice from the Russian people that its strength and health have never since fully recovered. That war overstrained the Russian people. It was yet another disaster on top of those of
2719Там же, с. 171-173. 2720И. Арад. Холокауст, с. 91. 2721М. Куповецкий. Людские потери еврейского населения… // Вестник Еврейского Унта…, 1995, № 2(9), с. 134-155. 2722КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 299. 2723Е.М. Андреев, Л.Е. Царский, Т.Л. Харькова. Население Советского Союза, 1922-1991. М., 1993, с. 78.
the Civil War and de-kulakization – and from which the Russian people have almost run dry.
The ruthless and unrelenting Catastrophe, which was gradually devouring Soviet Jewry in a multitude of exterminating events all over the occupied lands, was part of a greater Catastrophe designed to eradicate the entire European Jewry. As we examine only the events in Russia, the Catastrophe as a whole is not covered in this book. Yet the countless miseries having befallen on both our peoples, the Jewish and the Russian, in the 20th century, and the unbearable weight of the lessons of history and gnawing anxiety about the future, make it impossible not to share, if only briefly, some reflections about it, reflections of mine and others, and impossible not to examine how the high Jewish minds look at the Catastrophe from the historical perspective and how they attempt to encompass and comprehend it. It is for a reason that the “Catastrophe” is always written with a capital letter. It was an epic event for such an ancient and historical people. It could not fail to arouse the strongest feelings and a wide variety of reflections and conclusions among the Jews. In many Jews, long ago assimilated and distanced from their own people, the Catastrophe reignited a more distinct and intense sense of their Jewishness. Yet “for many, the Catastrophe became a proof that God is dead. If He had existed, He certainly would never have allowed Auschwitz.”2724 Then there is an opposite reflection: “Recently, a former Auschwitz inmate said: “In the camps, we were given a new Torah, though we have not been able to read it yet.”2725 An Israeli author states with conviction: “The Catastrophe happened because we did not follow the Covenant and did not return to our land. We had to return to our land to rebuild the Temple.”2726 Still, such an understanding is achieved only by a very few, although it does permeate the entire Old Testament. Some have developed and still harbor a bitter feeling: “Once, humanity turned away from us. We weren’t a part of the West at the time of the Catastrophe. The West rejected us, cast us away.”2727 “We are as upset by the nearly absolute indifference of the world and even of non-European Jewry to the plight of the Jews in the fascist countries as by the Catastrophe in Europe itself. … What a great guilt lies on the democracies of the world in general and especially on the Jews in the democratic countries! … The pogrom in Kishinev was an insignificant crime compared to the German atrocities, to … the
2724КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 175. 2725М. Каганская. Миф против реальности // “22”, 1988, № 58, с. 144. 2726Н. Гутина. Ориентация на Храм // Там же, с. 191. 2727М. Каганская. Миф против реальности // Там же, с. 141 -142.
methodically implemented plan of extermination of millions of Jewish lives; and yet Kishinev pogrom triggered a bigger protest… Even the Beilis Trial in Kiev attracted more worldwide attention.”2728 But this is unfair. After the world realized the essence and the scale of the destruction, the Jews experienced consistent and energetic support and passionate compassion from many nations. Some contemporary Israelis recognize this and even warn their compatriots against any such excesses: “Gradually, the memory of the Catastrophe ceased to be just a memory. It has become the ideology of the Jewish state. … The memory of the Catastrophe turned into a religious devotion, into the state cult. … The State of Israel has assumed the role of an apostle of the cult of the Catastrophe, the role of a priest who collects routine tithes from other nations. And woe to those who refuse to pay that tithe!” And in conclusion: “The worst legacy of Nazism for Jews is the Jew?s role of a super-victim.”2729 Here is a similar excerpt from yet another author: the cult of the Catastrophe has filled “a void in the souls of secular Jews,” “from being a reaction to an event of the past, the trauma of the Catastrophe has evolved into a new national symbol, replacing all other symbols.” And “this `mentality of the Catastrophe´ is growing with each passing year”; “if we do not recover from the trauma of Auschwitz, we will never become a normal nation.”2730 Among the Jews, the sometimes painful work of re-examining the Catastrophe never ceases. Here is the opinion of an Israeli historian, a former inmate of a Soviet camp: “I do not belong to those Jews who are inclined to blame the evil `goyim´ for our national misfortunes while casting ourselves as … poor lambs or toys in the hands of others. Anyway not in the 20th century! On the contrary, I fully agree with Hannah Arendt that the Jews of our century were equal participants in the historical games of the nations and the monstrous Catastrophe that befell them was the result of not only evil plots of the enemies of mankind, but also of the huge fatal miscalculations on the part of the Jewish people themselves, their leaders and activists.”2731 Indeed, Hannah Arendt was “searching for the causes of the Catastrophe [also] in Jewry itself. … Her main argument is that modern anti-Semitism was one of the consequences of the particular attitudes of the Jews towards the state and society in Europe”; the Jews “turned out to be unable to evaluate power shifts in a nation state and growing social contradictions.”2732 In the late 1970s, we read in Dan Levin’s book: “On this issue, I agree with Prof. Branover who believes that the Catastrophe was largely a punishment for
2728А. Менес. Катастрофа и возрождение // ЕМ-2, с. 111. 2729Бен-Барух. Тень // “22”, 1988, № 58, с. 197-198, 200. 2730Ури Авнери. Последняя месть Адольфа Гитлера // “22”, 1993, № 85, с. 132, 134, 139. 2731М. Хейфец. Что надо выяснить во времени // “22”, 1989, № 64, с. 218-219. 2732Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lügen: Rußland und die Juden im 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1992, pp. 137-138.
our sins, including the sin of leading the communist movement. There is something in it.”2733 Yet no such noticeable movement can be observed among world Jewry. To a great many contemporary Jews such conclusions appear insulting and blasphemous. To the contrary: “The very fact of the Catastrophe served as a moral justification for Jewish chauvinism. Lessons of the Second World War have been learned exactly contrariwise. … The ideology of Jewish Nationalism has grown and strengthened on this soil. This is terribly sad. A feeling of guilt and compassion towards the nation-victim has become an indulgence, absolving the sin unforgivable for all others. It is hence comes the moral permissibility of public appeals not to mix one’s own ancient blood with the alien blood.”2734 In the late 1980s, a Jewish publicist from Germany wrote: “Today, the `moral capital´ of Auschwitz is already spent.”2735 One year later, she stated: “Solid moral capital gained by the Jews because of Auschwitz seems to be depleted”; the Jews “can no longer proceed along the old way by raising pretensions to the world. Today, the world already has the right to converse with the Jews as it does with all others”; “the struggle for the rights of Jews is no more progressive than a struggle for the rights of all other nations. It is high time to break the mirror and look around – we are not alone in this world.”2736 It would have been equally great for Russian minds to elevate themselves to similarly decent and benevolent self-criticism, especially in making judgments about Russian history of the 20th century – the brutality of the Revolutionary period, the cowed indifference of the Soviet times and the abominable plundering of the post-Soviet age. And to do it despite the unbearable burden of realization that it was we Russians who ruined our history – through our useless rulers but also through our own worthlessness – and despite the gnawing anxiety that this may be irredeemable – to perceive the Russian experience as possibly a punishment from the Supreme Power.
2733Дан Левин. На краю соблазна: [Интервью] // “22”, 1978, № 1, с. 55. 2734Д. Хмельницкий. Под звонкий голос крови, или с самосознанием наперевес // “22”, 1992, № 80, с. 175. 2735С. Марголина. Германия и евреи: вторая попытка // Страна и мир, 1991, № 3, с. 142. 2736Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der Lügen…, pp. 150-151.
Chapter 22. From the end of the war to Stalin’s death
At the beginning of the 1920s the authors of a collection of articles titled Russia and the Jews foresaw that “all these bright perspectives” (for the Jews in the USSR) looked so bright only “if one supposes that the Bolsheviks would want to protect us. But would they? Can we assume that the people who in their struggle for power betrayed everything, from the Motherland to Communism, would remain faithful to us even when it stops benefiting them?”2737 However, during so favorable a time to them as the 1920s and 1930s the great majority of Soviet Jews chose to ignore this sober warning or simply did not hear it. Yet the Jews with their contribution to the Russian Revolution should have expected that one day the inevitable recoil of revolution would hit even them, at least during its ebb. The postwar period became “the years of deep disappointments”2738 and adversity for Soviet Jews. During Stalin’s last eight years, Soviet Jewry was tested by persecutions of the “cosmopolitans,” the loss of positions in science, arts and press, the crushing of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (EAK) with the execution of its leadership and, finally, by the “Doctors’ Plot.” By the nature of a totalitarian regime, only Stalin himself could initiate the campaign aimed at weakening the Jewish presence and influence in the Soviet system. Only he could make the first move. Yet because of the rigidity of Soviet propaganda and Stalin’s craftiness, not a single sound could be uttered nor a single step made in the open. We have seen already that Soviet propaganda did not raise any alarm about the annihilation of Jews in Germany during the war; indeed it covered up those things, obviously being afraid of appearing pro-Jewish in the eyes of its own citizens. The disposition of the Soviet authorities towards Jews could evolve for years without ever really surfacing at the level of official propaganda. The first changes and shuffles in the bureaucracy began quite inconspicuously at the time of growing rapprochement between Stalin and Hitler in 1939. By then Litvinov,
2737И.М. Бикерман. Россия и русское еврейство // Россия и евреи: Сб. 1 / Отечественное объединение русских евреев за границей. Париж: YMCA-Press, 1978, с. 80 [1-е изд. — Берлин: Основа, 1924]. 2738С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе с начала Второй мировой войны (1939-1965). Нью-Йорк: Изд. Американского Еврейского Рабочего Комитета, 1966, с. 198.
a Jewish Minister of Foreign Affairs, was replaced by Molotov (an ethnic Russian) and a ‘cleansing’ of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (NKID) was underway. Simultaneously, Jews were barred from entrance into diplomatic schools and military academies. Still, it took many more years before the disappearance of Jews from the NKID and the sharp decline of their influence in the Ministry of Foreign Trade became apparent. Because of the intrinsic secrecy of all Soviet inner party moves, only very few were aware of the presence of the subtle anti-Jewish undercurrents in the Agitprop apparatus by the end of 1942 that aimed to push out Jews from the major art centers such as the Bolshoi Theatre, the Moscow Conservatory, and the Moscow Philarmonic, where, according to the note which Alexandrov, Head of Agitprop, presented to the Central Committee in the summer of 1942, ‘everything was almost completely in the hands of non-Russians’ and ‘Russians had become an ethnic minority’ (accompanied by a detailed table to convey particulars).2739 Later, there had been attempts to “begin national regulation of cadres… from the top down, which essentially meant primarily pushing out Jews from the managerial positions”.2740 By and large, Stalin regulated this process by either supporting or checking such efforts depending on the circumstances. The wartime tension in the attitudes toward Jews was also manifested during post-war re-evacuation. In Siberia and Central Asia, wartime Jewish refugees were not welcomed by the local populace, so after the war they mostly settled in the capitals of Central Asian republics, except for those who moved back, not to their old shtetls and towns, but into the larger cities.2741 The largest returning stream of refugees fled to Ukraine where they were met with hostility by the local population, especially because of the return of Soviet officials and the owners of desirable residential property. This reaction in the formerly occupied territories was also fueled by Hitler’s incendiary propaganda during the Nazi occupation. Khrushchev, the Head of Ukraine from 1943 (when he was First Secretary of the Communist Party and at the same time Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Ukraine), not only said nothing on this topic in his public speeches, treating the fate of Jews during the occupation with silence, but he also upheld the secret instruction throughout Ukraine not to employ Jews in positions of authority. According to the tale of an old Jewish Communist Ruzha-Godes, who survived the entire Nazi occupation under a guise of being a Pole named Khelminskaya and was later denied employment by the long-awaited Communists because of her Jewishness, Khrushchev stated clearly and with his peculiar frankness: “In the past, the Jews committed many sins against the Ukrainian people. People hate them for that. We don’t need Jews in our
2739Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина: Власть и антисемитизм. М.: Международные отношения, 2001, с. 259-260. 2740Там же, с. 310. 2741С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 181-182, 195.
Ukraine. It would be better if they didn’t return here. They would better go to Birobidzhan. This is Ukraine. And, we don’t want Ukrainian people to infer that the return of Soviet authority means the return of Jews”.2742 “In the early September 1945 a Jewish major of the NKVD was brutally beaten in Kiev by two members of the military. He shot both of them dead. This incident caused a large-scale massacre of Jews with five fatalities”.2743 There are documented sources of other similar cases.2744 Sotsialistichesky Vestnik wrote that the Jewish “national feelings (which were exacerbated during the war) overreacted to the numerous manifestations of anti-Semitism and to the even more common indifference to anti-Semitism”.2745 This motif is so typical — almost as much as anti-Semitism itself: the indifference to anti-Semitism was likely to cause outrage. Yes, preoccupied by their own miseries, people and nations often lose compassion for the troubles of others. And the Jews are not an exception here. A modern author justly notes: “I hope that I, as a Jew who found her roots and place in Israel, would not be accused of apostasy if I point out that in the years of our terrible disasters, the Jewish intellectuals did not raise their voices in defense of the deported nations of Crimea and the Caucasus”.2746 After the liberation of Crimea by the Red Army in 1943, “talks started among circles of the Jewish elite in Moscow about a rebirth of the Crimean project of 1920s,” i.e., about resettling Jews in Crimea. The Soviet government did not discourage these aspirations, hoping that “American Jews would be more generous in their donations for the Red Army.” It is quite possible that Mikhoels and Feffer [heads of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, EAK], based on a verbal agreement with Molotov, negotiated with American Zionists about financial support of the project for Jewish relocation to Crimea during their triumphal tour of the USA in summer of 1943. The idea of a Crimean Jewish Republic was also backed by Lozovsky, the then-powerful Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs.2747 The EAK had yet another project for a Jewish Republic — to establish it in the place of the former Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (where, as we have seen in previous chapters, Jewish settlements were established in the wake of the exile of  the Germans). Ester Markish, widow of EAK member Perets Markish, confirms that he presented a letter “concerning transferring the former German Republic to the Jews”.2748 2742Хрущёв и еврейский вопрос // Социалистический вестник*, Нью-Йорк, 1961, № 1, с. 19. 2743Краткая Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — КЕЭ). Иерусалим: Общество по исследованию еврейских общин, 1996. Т. 8, с. 236. 2744Социалистический вестник, 1961, № 1, с. 19-20; Книга о русском еврействе, 1917- 1967 (далее — КРЕ-2). Нью-Йорк: Союз Русских Евреев, 1968, с. 146. 2745Хрущёв и миф о Биробиджане // Социалистический вестник, 1958, № 7-8, с. 145. 2746М. Блинкова. Знание и мнение // Стрелец, Jersey City, 1988, № 12, с. 12. 2747Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 428-429. 2748Э. Маркиш. Как их убивали // “22”: Общественно-политический и литературный журнал еврейской интеллигенции из СССР в Израиле. Тель-Авив, 1982, № 25, с. 203.
In the Politburo, “Molotov, Kaganovich and Voroshilov were the most positively disposed to the EAK”.2749 And, “according to rumors, some members of the Politburo… were inclined to support this [Crimean] idea”.2750 On February 15, 1944, Stalin was forwarded a memorandum about that plan which was signed by Mikhoels, Feffer and Epshtein. (According to P. Sudoplatov, although the decision to expel the Tatars from Crimea had been made by Stalin earlier, the order to carry it out reached Beria on February 14,2751 so the memorandum was quite timely.) That was the high point of Jewish hopes. G. V. Kostirenko, a researcher of this period, writes: the leaders of the EAK “plunged into euphoria. They imagined (especially after Mikhoels’ and Feffer’s trip to the West) that with the necessary pressure, they could influence and steer their government’s policy in the interests of the Soviet Jews, just like the American Jewish elite does it”.2752 But Stalin did not approve the Crimean project – it did not appeal to him because of the strategic importance of the Crimea. The Soviet leaders expected a war with America and probably thought that in such case the entire Jewish population of Crimea would sympathize with the enemy. (It is reported that at the beginning of the 1950s some Jews were arrested and told by their MGB [Ministry for State Security, a predecessor of KGB] investigators: “You are not going to stand against America, are you? So you are our enemies.”) Khrushchev shared those doubts and 10 years later he stated to a delegation of the Canadian Communist party that was expressing particular interest in the Jewish question in the USSR: Crimea “should not be a center of Jewish colonization, because in case of war it will become the enemy’s bridgehead”.2753 Indeed, the petitions about Jewish settlement in Crimea were very soon used as a proof of the “state treason” on the part of the members of the EAK. By the end of WWII the authorities again revived the idea of Jewish resettlement in Birobidzhan, particularly Ukrainian Jews. From 1946 to 1947 several organized echelons and a number of independent families were sent there, totaling up to 5-6 thousand persons.2754 However, quite a few returned disillusioned. This relocation movement withered by 1948. Later, with a general turn of Stalin’s politics, arrests among the few Birobidjan Jewish activists started. (They were accused of artificial inculcation of Jewish culture into the non-Jewish population and, of course, espionage and of having planned Birobidzhan’s secession in order to ally with Japan). This was the de facto end of the history of Jewish colonization in Birobidzhan. At the end of the 1920s there were plans to re-settle 60,000 Jews there by the end of the first 5-year
2749Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 430. 2750КЕЭ, т. 4, с. 602. 2751Павел Судоплатов. Спецоперации: Лубянка и Кремль: 1930-1950 годы. М.: ОЛМАПресс, 1997, с. 466-467. 2752Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 435. 2753Крымское дело // Социалистический вестник, 1957, № 5, с. 98. 2754С.М. Шварц. Биробиджан // КРЕ-2, с. 189.
planning period. By 1959 there were only 14,000 Jews in Birobidzhan, less than 9% of the population of the region.2755 However, in Ukraine the situation had markedly changed in favor of Jews. The government was engaged in the fierce struggle with Bandera’s separatist fighters and no longer catered to the national feelings of Ukrainians. At the end of 1946, the Communist Party “started a covert campaign against antiSemitism, gradually conditioning the population to the presence of Jews among authorities in different spheres of the national economy.” At the same time, in the beginning of 1947, Kaganovich took over for Khrushchev as the official leader of Ukrainian Communist Party. The Jews were promoted in the party as well, “of which a particular example was the appointment of a Jew … the Secretary… of Zhitomir Obkom”.2756 However, the attitudes of many Jews towards this government and its new policies were justifiably cautious. Soon after the end of the war, when the former Polish citizens began returning to Poland, many non-Polish Jews “hastily seized this opportunity” and relocated there.2757 (What happened after that in Poland is yet another story: a great overrepresentation of Jews occurred in the post-war puppet Polish government, among managerial elites and in the Polish KGB, which would again result in miserable consequences for the Jews of Poland. After the war, other countries of Eastern Europe saw similar conflicts: “the Jews had played a huge role in economic life of all these countries,” and though they lost their possessions under Hitler, after the war, when “the restitution laws were introduced… (they) affected very large numbers of new owners.” Upon their return Jews demanded the restoration of their property and enterprises that were not nationalized by Communists and this created a new wave of hostility towards them.2758) Meanwhile, during these very years the biggest event in world Jewish history was happening — the state of Israel was coming into existence. In 194647, when the Zionists were at odds with Britain, Stalin, perhaps out of antiBritish calculation and or opportunistically hoping to get a foothold there, took the side of the former. During all of 1947 Stalin, acting through Gromyko in the UN, actively supported the idea of the creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine and supplied the Zionists with a critical supply of Czechoslovakmade weapons. In May 1948, only two days after the Israeli declaration of nationhood, the USSR officially recognized that country and condemned hostile actions of Arabs. However, Stalin miscalculated to what extent this support would reinvigorate the national spirit of Soviet Jews. Some of them implored the EAK to organize a fundraiser for the Israeli military, others wished to enlist as
2755Там же, с. 192, 195-196. 2756С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 185-186. 2757Там же, с. 130. 2758Там же, с. 217-218.
volunteers, while still others wanted to form a special Jewish military division.2759 Amid this burgeoning enthusiasm, Golda Meir arrived to Moscow in September of 1948 as the first ambassador of Israel and was met with unprecedented joy in Moscow’s synagogues and by Moscow’s Jewish population in general. Immediately, as the national spirit of Soviet Jews rose and grew tremendously because of the Catastrophe, many of them began applying for relocation to Israel. Apparently, Stalin had expected that. Yet it turned out that many of his citizens wished to run away en masse into, by all accounts, the pro-Western State of Israel. There, the influence and prestige of the United States grew, while the USSR was at the same time losing support of Arab countries. (Nevertheless, “the cooling of relations [with Israel] was mutual. Israel more and more often turned towards American Jewry which became its main support”.2760) Probably because he was frightened by such a schism in the Jewish national feelings, Stalin drastically changed policies regarding Jews from the end of 1948 and for the rest of his remaining years. He began acting in his typical style — quietly but with determination, he struck to the core, but with only tiny movements visible on the surface. Nevertheless, while the visible tiny ripples hardly mattered, Jewish leaders had many reasons to be concerned, as they felt the fear hanging in the air. The then editor of the Polish-Jewish newspaper Folkshtimme, Girsh Smolyar, recalled the “panic that seized Soviet communist Jews after the war.” Emmanuel Kazakevitch and other Jewish writers were distressed. Smolyar had seen on Ehrenburg’s table “a mountain of letters — literally scream of pain about current anti-Jewish attitudes throughout the country”.2761 Yet Ehrenburg knew his job very well and carried it out. (As became known much later, it was exactly then that the pre-publication copy of the Black Book compiled by I. Ehrenburg and B. Grossman, which described the mass killings and suffering of the Soviet Jews during the Soviet-German war, was destroyed.) In addition, on September 21, 1948, as a counterbalance to Golda Meir’s triumphal arrival, Pravda published a large article commissioned by Ehrenburg which stated that the Jews are not a nation at all and that they are doomed to assimilate.2762 This article created dismay not only among Soviet Jews, but also in America. With the start of the Cold War, “the discrimination against the Jews in the Soviet Union “became one of the main anti-Soviet trump cards of the West. (As was the inclination in the West towards various ethnic separatist movements in the USSR, a sympathy that had never previously gained support among Soviet Jews). 2759Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 403-404. 2760С. Цирюльников. СССР, евреи и Израиль // Время и мы (далее — ВМ): Международный журнал литературы и общественных проблем. Нью-Йорк, 1987, № 96, с. 156. 2761С. Цирюльников. СССР, евреи и Израиль // ВМ, Нью-Йорк, 1987, № 96, с. 150. 2762И. Эренбург. По поводу одного письма // Правда, 1948, 21 сентября, с. 3.
However, the EAK, which had been created to address war-time issues, continued gaining influence. By that time it listed approximately 70 members, had its own administrative apparatus, a newspaper and a publishing house. It functioned as a kind of spiritual and physical agent of all Soviet Jews before the CK (Central Committee) of the VKPb (all-Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks), as well as before the West. “EAK executives were allowed to do and to have a lot — a decent salary, an opportunity to publish and collect royalties abroad, to receive and to redistribute gifts from abroad and, finally, to travel abroad.” EAK became the crystallization center of an initially elitist and upper-echelon and then of a broadly growing Jewish national movement”,2763 a burgeoning symbol of Jewish national autonomy. For Stalin, the EAK become a problem which had to be dealt with. He started with the most important figure, the Head of the Soviet Information Bureau (Sovinformburo), Lozovsky, who, according to Feffer (who was vice-chairman of EAK since July 1945), was “the spiritual leader of the EAK… knew all about its activities and was its head for all practical purposes.” In the summer of 1946, a special auditing commission from Agitprop of the CK [of the VKPb] inspected Sovinformburo and found that “the apparatus is polluted … [there is] an intolerable concentration of Jews.” Lozovsky was ejected from his post of Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs (just as Litvinov and Maisky had been) and in summer of 1947 he also lost his post as of Head of the Sovinformburo.2764 After that, the fate of the EAK was sealed. In September of 1946, the auditing commission from the Central Committee concluded that the EAK, instead of “leading a rigorous offensive ideological war against the Western and above all Zionist propaganda… supports the position of bourgeois Zionists and the Bund and in reality… it fights for the reactionary idea of a United Jewish nation.” In 1947, the Central Committee stated, that “the work among the Jewish population of the Soviet Union is not a responsibility” of the EAK. “The EAK’s job was to focus on the “decisive struggle against aggression by international reactionaries and their Zionist agents”.2765 However, these events coincided with the pro-Israel stance of the USSR and the EAK was not dissolved. On the other hand, EAK Chairman Mikhoels who was “the informal leader of Soviet Jewry, had to shed his illusions about the possibility of influencing the Kremlin’s national policy via influencing the Dictator’s relatives.” Here, the suspicion fell mostly on Stalin’s son—in-law Grigory Morozov. However, the most active help to the EAK was provided by Molotov’s wife, P.S. Zhemchyzhina, who was arrested in the beginning of 1949, and Voroshilov’s wife, “Ekaterina Davidovna (Golda Gorbman), a fanatic Bolshevik, who had been expelled from the synagogue in her youth.” Abakumov reported that Mikhoels was suspected of “gathering private
2763Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 353, 398. 2764Там же*, с. 361, 363-364. 2765Там же, с. 366, 369.
information about the Leader”.2766 Overall, according to the MGB he “demonstrated excessive interest in the private life of the Head of the Soviet Government,” while leaders of the EAK “gathered materials about the personal life of J. Stalin and his family at the behest of US Intelligence”.2767 However, Stalin could not risk an open trial of the tremendously influential Mikhoels, so Mikhoels was murdered in January 1948 under the guise of an accident. Soviet Jewry was shocked and terrified by the demise of their spiritual leader. The EAK was gradually dismantled after that. By the end of 1948 its premises were locked up, all documents were taken to Lubyanka, and its newspaper and the publishing house were closed. Feffer and Zuskin, the key EAK figures, were secretly arrested soon afterwards and these arrests were denied for a long time. In January 1949 Lozovsky was arrested, followed by the arrests of a number of other notable members of the EAK in February. They were intensively interrogated during 1949, but in 1950 the investigation stalled. (All this coincided [in accord with Stalin’s understanding of balance] with the annihilation of the Russian nationalist tendencies in the leadership of the Leningrad government — the so-called “anti-party group of KuznetsovRodionov-Popkov,” but those developments, their repression and the significance of those events were largely overlooked by historians even though “about two thousand party functionaries were arrested and subsequently executed”2768 in 1950 in connection with the “Leningrad Affair”). In January 1948, Stalin ordered Jews to be pushed out of Soviet culture. In his usual subtle and devious manner, the “order” came through a prominent editorial in Pravda, seemingly dealing with a petty issue, “about one anti-Party group of theatrical critics”.2769 (A more assertive article in Kultura i Zhizn followed on the next day2770). The key point was the “decoding” of Russian the Russian pen-names of Jewish celebrities. In the USSR, “many Jews camouflage their Jewish origins with such artifice,” so that “it is impossible to figure out their real names” explains the editor of a modern Jewish journal.2771 This article in Pravda had a long but obscure pre-history. In 1946 reports of the Central Committee it was already noted “that out of twenty-eight highly publicized theatrical critics, only six are Russians. It implied that the majority of the rest were Jews.” Smelling trouble, but still “supposing themselves to be vested with the highest trust of the Party, some theatrical critics, confident of victory, openly confronted Fadeev” in November 1946.2772 Fadeev was the allpowerful Head of the Union of Soviet Writers and Stalin’s favorite. And so they
2766Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 376, 379, 404. 2767КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 243. 2768Там же, с. 248. 2769Правда, 1949, 28 января, с. 3. 2770На чуждых позициях: (О происках антипатриотической группы театральных критиков) // Культура и жизнь, 1949, 30 января, с. 2-3. 2771В. Перельман. …Виноваты сами евреи // ВМ, Тель-Авив, 1977, № 23, с. 216. 2772Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 321, 323.
suffered a defeat. Then the case stalled for a long time and only resurfaced in 1949. The campaign rolled on through the newspapers and party meetings. G. Aronson, researching Jewish life “in Stalin’s era” writes: “The goal of this campaign was to displace Jewish intellectuals from all niches of Soviet life. Informers were gloatingly revealing their pen-names. It turned out that E. Kholodov is actually Meyerovich, Jakovlev is Kholtsman, Melnikov is Millman, Jasny is Finkelstein, Vickorov is Zlochevsky, Svetov is Sheidman and so on. Literaturnaya Gazeta worked diligently on these disclosures”.2773 Undeniably, Stalin hit the worst-offending spot, the one that highly annoyed the public. However, Stalin was not so simple as to just blurt out “the Jews.” From the first push at the “groups of theatrical critics” flowed a broad and sustained campaign against the “cosmopolitans” (with their Soviet inertial dimwittedness they overused this innocent term and spoiled it). “Without exception, all ‘cosmopolitans’ under attack were Jews. They were being discovered everywhere. Because all of them were loyal Soviet citizens never suspected of anything anti-Soviet, they survived the great purges by Yezhov and Yagoda. Some were very experienced and influential people, sometimes eminent in their fields of expertise”.2774 The exposure of “cosmopolitans” then turned into a ridiculous, even idiotic glorification of Russian “primacy” in all and every area of science, technology and culture. Yet the “cosmopolitans” usually were not being arrested but instead were publicly humiliated, fired from publishing houses, ideological and cultural organizations, from TASS, from Glavlit, from literature schools, theaters, orchestras; some were expelled from the party and publication of their works was often discouraged. And the public campaign was expanding, spreading into new fields and compromising new names. Anti-Jewish cleansing of “cosmopolitans” was conducted in the research institutes of the Academy of Science: Institute of Philosophy (with its long history of internecine feuding between different cliques), the institutes of Economy, Law, in the Academy of Social Sciences at the CK of the VKPb, in the School of Law (and then spread to the office of Public Prosecutor). Thus, in the Department of History at MGU (Moscow State University), even a long-standing faithful communist and falsifier, I. I. Minz, member of the Academy, who enjoyed Stalin’s personal trust and was awarded with Stalin Prizes and concurrently chaired historical departments in several universities, was labeled “the head of cosmopolitans in Historical Science.” After that numerous scientific posts at MGU were ‘liberated’ from his former students and other Jewish professors.2775
2773Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 150. 2774Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 150. 2775А. Некрич. Поход против “космополитов” в МГУ // Континент: Литературный, обществ.-политический и религиозный журнал. Париж, 1981, № 28, с. 301-320.
Purges of Jews from technical fields and the natural sciences were gradually gaining momentum. “The end of 1945 and all of 1946 were relatively peaceful for the Jews of this particular social group.” L. Mininberg studied Jewish contributions in Soviet science and industry during the war: “In 1946, the first serious blow since the end of the war was dealt to the administration and a big ‘case’ was fabricated. Its principal victims were mainly Russians… there were no Jews among them,” though “investigation reports contained testaments against Israel Solomonovitch Levin, director of the Saratov Aviation Plant. He was accused on the charge that during the Battle for Stalingrad, two aviation regiments were not able to take off because of manufacturing defects in the planes produced by the plant. The charge was real, not made-up by the investigators. However, Levin was neither fired nor arrested.” In 1946, “B.L. Vannikov, L.M. Kaganovich, S.Z. Ginzburg, L.Z. Mekhlis all kept their Ministry posts in the newly formed government… Almost all Jewish former deputy ministers also retained their positions as assistants to ministers.” The first victims among the Jewish technical elite appeared only in 1947.2776 In 1950, academic A. F. Ioffe “was forced to retire from the post of Director of the Physical-Engineering Institute, which he organized and headed since its inception in 1918.” In 1951, 34 directors and 31 principal engineers of aviation plants had been fired. “This list contained mostly Jews.” If in 1942 there were nearly forty Jewish directors and principal engineers in the Ministry of General Machine-Building (Ministry of Mortar Artillery) then only three remained by 1953. In the Soviet Army, “the Soviet authorities persecuted not only Jewish generals, but lower ranking officers working on the development of military technology and weaponry were also removed”.2777 Thus, the “purging campaigns” spread over to the defense, airplane construction, and automobile industries (though they did not affect the nuclear branch), primarily removing Jews from administrative, directorial and principal engineering positions; later purging was expanded onto various bureaucracies. Yet the genuine, ethnic denominator was never mentioned in the formal paperwork. Instead, the sacked officials faced charges of economic crimes or having relatives abroad at a time when conflict with the USA was expected, or other excuses were used. The purging campaigns rolled over the central cities and across the provinces. The methods of these campaigns were notoriously Soviet, in the spirit of 1930s: a victim was inundated in a vicious atmosphere of terror and as a result often tried to deflect the threat to himself by accusing others. By repeating the tide of 1937, albeit in a milder form, the display of Soviet Power reminded the Jews that they had never become truly integrated and could be pushed aside at any moment. “We do not have indispensable people!”
2776Л.Л. Мининберг. Советские евреи в науке и промышленности СССР в период Второй мировой войны (1941-1945). М., 1995, с. 413, 414, 415. 2777Там же, с. 416, 417, 427, 430.
(However, “Lavrentiy Beria was tolerant of Jews. At least, in appointments to positions in government”.2778) “‘Pushing’ Jews out of prestigious occupations that were crucial for the ruling elite in the spheres of manufacturing, administration, cultural and ideological activities, as well as limiting or completely barring the entrance of Jews into certain institutions of higher education gained enormous momentum in 1948-1953. … Positions of any importance in the KGB, party apparatus, and military were closed to the Jews, and quotas were in place for admission into certain educational institutions and cultural and scientific establishments”.2779 Through its “fifth item” [i.e., the question about nationality] Soviet Jews were oppressed by the very same method used in the Proletarian Questionnaire, other items of which were so instrumental in crushing the Russian nobility, clergy, intellectuals and all the rest of the “former people” since the 1920s. “Although the highest echelon of the Jewish political elite suffered from administrative perturbations, surprisingly it was not as bad as it seemed,” — concludes G. V. Kostyrchenko. “The main blow fell on the middle and the most numerous stratum of the Jewish elite — officials… and also journalists, professors and other members of the creative intelligentsia. … It was these, so to say, nominal Jews — the individuals with nearly complete lack of ethnic ties — who suffered the brunt of the cleansing of bureaucracies after the war”.2780 However, speaking of scientific cadres, the statistics are these: “at the end of the 1920s there were 13.6% Jews among scientific researchers in the country, in 1937 — 17.5%”,2781 and by 1950 their proportion slightly decreased to 15.4% (25,125 Jews among 162,508 Soviet researchers).2782 S. Margolina, looking back from the end of the 1980s concludes that, despite the scale of the campaign, after the war, “the number of highly educated Jews in high positions always remained disproportionally high. But, in contrast with the former “times of happiness,” it certainly had decreased”.2783 A.M. Kheifetz recalls “a memoir article of a member of the Academy, Budker, one of the fathers of the Soviet Abomb” where he described how they were building the first Soviet A-bomb — being exhausted from the lack of sleep and fainting from stress and overwork — and it is precisely those days of persecution of “cosmopolitans” that were “the most inspired and the happiest” in his life.2784 In 1949 “among Stalin Prize laureates no less than 13% were Jews, just like in the previous years.” By 1952 there were only 6%.2785 Data on the number of 2778Л.Л. Мининберг. Советские евреи в науке и промышленности… с. 442. 2779КЕЭ, т. 6, с. 855. 2780Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 515, 518. 2781КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 190. 2782И. Домалъский. Технология ненависти* // ВМ, Тель-Авив, 1978, № 25, с. 120. 2783Sonja Margolina. Das Ende der LAgen: Rulland und die Juden im 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1992, S. 86. 2784Михаил Хейфец. Место и время (еврейские заметки). Париж: Третья волна, 1978, с. 68-69. 2785С.М. Шварц. Антисемитизм в Советском Союзе. Нью-Йорк: Изд-во им. Чехова, 1952, 225-226. 229.
Jewish students in USSR were not published for nearly a quarter of century, from the pre-war years until 1963. We will examine those in the next chapter. The genuine Jewish culture that had been slowly reviving after the war was curtailed and suppressed in 1948-1951. Jewish theatres were no longer subsidized and the few remaining ones were closed, along with book publishing houses, newspapers and bookstores.2786 In 1949, the international radio broadcasting in Yiddish was also discontinued.2787 In the military, “by 1953 almost all Jewish generals” and “approximately 300 colonels and lieutenant colonels were forced to resign from their positions”.2788
As the incarcerated Jewish leaders remained jailed in Lubyanka for over three years, Stalin slowly and with great caution proceeded in dismantling the EAK. He was very well aware what kind of international storm would be triggered by using force. (Luckily, though, he acquired his first H-bomb in 1949.) On the other hand, he fully appreciated the significance of unbreakable ties between world Jewry and America, his enemy since his rejection of the Marshall Plan. Investigation of EAK activities was reopened in January 1952. The accused were charged with connections to the “Jewish nationalist organizations in America,” with providing “information regarding the economy of the USSR” to those organizations… and also with “plans of repopulating Crimea and creating a Jewish Republic there”.2789 Thirteen defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death: S. A. Lozovsky, I. S. Ysefovich, B. A. Shimeliovich, V. L. Zuskin, leading Jewish writers D.R. Bergelson, P. D. Marshik, L. M. Kvitko, I. S. Feffer, D. N. Gofshtein, and also L. Y. Talmi, I. S. Vatenberg, C. S. Vatenberg — Ostrovsky, and E. I. Teumin.2790 They were secretly executed in August. (Ehrenburg, who was also a member of the EAK, was not even arrested. (He assumed it was pure luck.) Similarly, the crafty David Zaslavsky survived also. And even after the execution of the Jewish writers, Ehrenburg continued to reassure the West that those writers were still alive and writing.2791 The annihilation of the Jewish Antifascist Committee went along with similar secret “daughter” cases; 110 people were arrested, 10 of them were executed and 5 died during the investigation.2792 In autumn of 1952 Stalin went into the open as arrests among Jews began, such as arrests of Jewish professors of medicine and among members of literary
2786С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 161-163; Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 373. 2787КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 245. 2788КЕЭ, т. 1, с. 687. 2789КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 251. 2790Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 473. 2791Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина //КРЕ-2, с. 155-156. 2792Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 507.
circles in Kiev in October 1952. This information immediately spread among Soviet Jews and throughout the entire world. On October 17th, Voice of America broadcast about “mass repressions” among Soviet Jews.2793 Soviet “Jews were frozen by mortal fear”.2794 Soon afterwards in November in Prague, a show trial of Slansky, the Jewish First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and several other top state and party leaders took place in a typically loud and populist Stalinist-type entourage. The trial was openly anti-Jewish with naming “world leading” Jews such as Ben Gurion and Morgenthau, and placing them in league with American leaders Truman and Acheson. The outcome was that eleven were hanged, eight Jews among them. Summing up the official version, K. Gotwald said: “This investigation and court trial … disclosed a new channel through which treason and espionage permeated the Communist Party. This is Zionism”.2795 At the same time, since summer of 1951, the development of the “Doctors’ Plot” was gaining momentum. The case included the accusation of prominent physicians, doctors to the Soviet leadership, for the criminal treatment of state leaders. For the secret services such an accusation was nothing new, as similar accusations had been made against Professor D. D. Pletnev and physicians L. G. Levin and I. N. Kazakov already during the “Bukharin trial” in 1937. At that time, the gullible Soviet public gasped at such utterly evil plots. No one had any qualms about repeating the same old scenario. Now we know much more about the “Doctors’ Plot.” Initially it was not entirely an anti-Jewish action; the prosecution list contained the names of several prominent Russian physicians as well. In essence, the affair was fueled by Stalin’s generally psychotic state of mind, with his fear of plots and mistrust of the doctors, especially as his health deteriorated. By September 1952 prominent doctors were arrested in groups. Investigations unfolded with cruel beatings of suspects and wild accusations; slowly it turned into a version of “spying-terroristic plot connected with foreign intelligence organizations,” “American hirelings,” “saboteurs in white coats,” “bourgeois nationalism” — all indicating that it was primary aimed at Jews. (Robert Conquest in The Great Terror follows this particular tragic line of involvement of highly placed doctors. In 1935, the false death certificate of Kuibyshev was signed by doctors G. Kaminsky, I. Khodorovsky, and L. Levin. In 1937 they signed a similarly false death certificate of Ordzhonikidze. They knew so many deadly secrets — could they expect anything but their own death? Conquest writes that Dr. Levin had cooperated with the Cheka since 1920. “Working with Dzerzhinsky, Menzhinsky, and Yagoda. … [he] was trusted by the head of such an organization. … It is factually correct to consider Levin… a member of Yagoda’s circle in the NKVD.” Further, we read something sententious: “Among those outstanding doctors who [in 1937] moved against [Professor of
2793Г. Аронсон. Еврейский вопрос в эпоху Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 152. 2794В. Богуславский. У истоков // “22,” 1986, № 47, с. 102. 2795Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина*, с. 504.
Medicine] Pletnev and who had signed fierce accusative resolutions against him, we find the names of M. Vovsi, B. Kogan and V. Zelenin, who in their turn… were subjected to torture by the MGB in 1952-53 in connection with “the case of doctor-saboteurs,” “as well as two other doctors, N. Shereshevky and V. Vinogradov who provided a pre-specified death certificate of Menzhinsky”.2796) On January 3, 1953 Pravda and Izvestiya published an announcement by TASS about the arrest of a “group of doctors-saboteurs.” The accusation sounded like a grave threat for Soviet Jewry, and, at the same time, by a degrading Soviet custom, prominent Soviet Jews were forced to sign a letter to Pravda with the most severe condemnation of the wiles of the Jewish “bourgeois nationalists” and their approval of Stalin’s government. Several dozen signed the letter. (Among them were Mikhail Romm, D. Oistrakh, S. Marshak, L. Landau, B. Grossman, E. Gilels, I. Dunayevsky and others. Initially Ehrenburg did not sign it — he found the courage to write a letter to Stalin: “to ask your advice.” His resourcefulness was unsurpassed indeed. To Ehrenburg, it was clear that “there is no such thing as the Jewish nation” and that assimilation is the only way and that Jewish nationalism “inevitably leads to betrayal.” Yet that the letter that was offered to him to sign could be invidiously inferred by the “enemies of our country.” He concluded that “I myself cannot resolve these questions,” but if “leading comrades will let me know … [that my signature] is desired … [and] useful for protecting our homeland and for peace in the world, I will sign it immediately”.2797) The draft of that statement of loyalty was painstakingly prepared in the administration of the Central Committee and eventually its style became softer and more respectful. However, this letter never appeared in the press. Possibly because of the international outrage, the “Doctors’ Plot” apparently began to slow down in the last days of Stalin.2798 After the public announcement, the “‘Doctors’ Plot’ created a huge wave of repression of Jewish physicians all over the country. In many cities and towns, the offices of State Security began fabricating criminal cases against Jewish doctors. They were afraid to even go to work, and their patients were afraid to be treated by them”.2799 After the “cosmopolitan” campaign, the menacing growl of “people’s anger” in reaction to the “Doctors’ Plot” utterly terrified many Soviet Jews, and a rumor arose (and then got rooted in the popular mind) that Stalin was planning a mass eviction of Jews to the remote parts of Siberia and North — a fear reinforced by the examples of postwar deportation of entire peoples. In his latest work G. Kostyrchenko, a historian and a scrupulous researcher of Stalin’s 2796Роберт Конквест. Большой террор / Пер. с англ. Firenze: Edizioni Aurora, 1974, с. 168, 353, 738-739, 754, 756-757. 2797«Против попыток воскресить еврейский национализм.” Обращение И.Г. Эренбурга к И.В. Сталину // Источник: Документы русской истории. М., 1997, № 1, с. 141-146. 2798Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 682, 693. 2799КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 254, 255.
“Jewish” policies, very thoroughly refutes this “myth of deportation,” proving that it had never been confirmed, either then or subsequently by any facts, and even in principle such a deportation would not have been possible.2800 But it is amazing how bewildered were those circles of Soviet Jews, who were unfailingly loyal to the Soviet-Communist ideology. Many years later, S. K. told me: “There is no single action in my life that I am as ashamed of as my belief in the genuineness of  the “Doctors’ Plot” of 1953! — that they, perhaps involuntarily, were involved a foreign conspiracy…” An article from the 1960s states that “in spite of a pronounced antiSemitism of Stalin’s rule … many [Jews] prayed that Stalin stayed alive, as they knew through experience that any period of weak power means a slaughter of Jews. We were well aware of the quite rowdy mood of the ‘fraternal nations’ toward us”.2801 On February 9th a bomb exploded at the Soviet embassy in Tel Aviv. On February 11, 1953 the USSR broke off diplomatic relations with Israel. The conflict surrounding the “Doctors’ Plot” intensified due to these events. And then Stalin went wrong, and not for the first time, right? He did not understand how the thickening of the plot could threaten him personally, even within the secure quarters of his inaccessible political Olympus. The explosion of international anger coincided with the rapid action of internal forces, which could possibly have done away with Stalin. It could have happened through Beria (for example, according to Avtorhanov’s version.2802) After a public communiqué about the “Doctors’ Plot” Stalin lived only 51 days. “The release from custody and the acquittal of the doctors without trial were perceived by the older generation of Soviet Jews as a repetition of the Purim miracle”: Stalin had perished on the day of Purim, when Esther saved the Jews of Persia from Haman.2803 On April 3 all the surviving accused in the “Doctors’ Plot” were released. It was publicly announced the next day. And yet again it was the Jews who pushed the frozen history forward.
2800Г.В. Костырченко. Тайная политика Сталина, с. 671-685. 2801Н. Шапиро. Слово рядового советского еврея // Русский антисемитизм и евреи. Сб. Лондон, 1968, с, 50. 2802А. Авторханов. Загадка смерти Сталина: (Заговор Берия). Франкфурт-на-Майне: Посев, 1976, с. 231-239. 2803Д. Штурман. Ни мне мёда твоего, ни укуса твоего // “22,” 1985, № 42, с. 140-141.
Chapter 23. Before the Six-Day War
On the next day after Stalin’s death, on March 6, the MGB (Ministry of State Security) “ceased to exist”, albeit only formally, as Beria had incorporated it into his own Ministry of Interior Affairs (MVD). This move allowed him “to disclose the abuses” by the MGB, including those of the still publicly unanounced MGB Minister, Ignatiev (who secretly replaced Abakumov). It seems that after 1952 Beria was losing Stalin’s trust and had been gradually pushed out by Ignatiev-Ryumin during the `Doctors’ Plot´. Thus, by force of circumstances, Beria became a magnet for the new anti-Stalin opposition.  And now, on April 4, just a month after Stalin’s death, he enjoyed enough power to dismiss the “Doctors’ Plot” and accuse Ryumin of its fabrication. Then three months later the diplomatic relations with Israel were restored. All this reinvigorated hope among the Soviet Jews, as the rise of Beria could be very promising for them. However, Beria was soon ousted. Yet because of the usual Soviet inertia, “with the death of Stalin … many previously fired Jews were reinstalled in their former positions”; “during the period called the “thaw”, many old Zionists … were released from the camps”; “during the post-Stalin period, the first Zionist groups started to emerge – initially at local levels.”2804 Yet once again the things began to turn unfavorably for the Jews. In March 1954, the Soviet Union vetoed the UN Security Council attempt to open the Suez Canal to Israeli ships. At the end of 1955, Khrushchev declared a proArab,  anti-Israel turn of Soviet foreign policy. In February 1956, in his famous report at the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev, while speaking profusely about the massacres of 1937-1938, did not point any attention to the fact that there were so many Jews among the victims; he did not name Jewish leaders executed in 1952; and when speaking of the “Doctors’ Plot,” he did not stress that it was specifically directed against the Jews. “It is easy to imagine the bitter feelings this aroused among the Jews,” they “swept the Jewish communist circles abroad and even the leadership of those Communist parties, where Jews constituted a significant percentage of members (such as in the Canadian and US Communist parties).”2805 In April 1956 in Warsaw, under the communist
2804Краткая Еврейская Энциклопедия (далее — КЕЭ). Иерусалим: Общество по исследованию еврейских общин, 1996. Т. 8, с. 256. 2805С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе с начала Второй мировой войны (1939-1965). Нью-Йорк: Изд. Американского Еврейского Рабочего Комитета, 1966, с. 247.
regime (though with heavy Jewish influence), the Jewish newspaper Volksstimme published a sensational article, listing the names of Jewish cultural and social celebrities who perished from 1937-1938 and from 1948-1952.  Yet at the same time the article also condemned the “capitalist enemies”, “Beria’s period” and welcomed the return of “Leninist national policy.” “The article in Volksstimme had unleashed a storm.”2806 International communist organizations and Jewish social circles loudly began to demand an explanation from the Soviet leaders. “Throughout 1956, foreign visitors to the Soviet Union openly asked about Jewish situation there, and particularly why the Soviet government has not yet abandoned the dark legacy of Stalinism on the Jewish question?”2807 It became a recurrent theme for the foreign correspondents and visiting delegations of “fraternal communist parties”. (Actually, that could be the reason for the loud denouncement in the Soviet press of the “betrayal” of Communism by Howard Fast, an American writer and former enthusiastic champion of Communism. Meanwhile, “hundreds of Soviet Jews from different cities in one form or another participated in meetings of resurgent Zionist groups and coteries”; “old Zionists with connections to relatives or friends in Israel were active in those groups.”2808 In May 1956, a delegation from the French Socialist Party arrived in Moscow. “Particular attention was paid to the situation of Jews in the Soviet Union.”2809 Khrushchev found himself in a hot corner – now he could not afford to ignore the questions, yet he knew, especially after experiencing postwar Ukraine, that the Jews are not likely to be returned to their [high] social standing like in 1920s and 1930s. He replied: “In the beginning of the revolution, we had many Jews in executive bodies of party and government …. After that, we have developed new cadres …. If Jews wanted to occupy positions of leadership in our republics today, it would obviously cause discontent among the local people …. If a Jew, appointed to a high office, surrounds himself with Jewish colleagues, it naturally provokes envy and hostility toward all Jews.” (The French publication Socialist Herald calls “strange” and “false” the Khrushchev’s point about “surrounding himself with Jewish colleagues”.)  In the same discussion, when Jewish culture and schools were addressed, Khrushchev explained that “if Jewish schools were established, there probably would not be many prospective students. The Jews are scattered all over the country …. If the Jews were required to attend a Jewish school, it certainly would cause outrage. It would be understood as a kind of a ghetto.”2810
2806Там же, с. 247-248. 2807Хрущёв и еврейский вопрос // Социалистический вестник, Нью-Йорк, 1961, № 1, с. 20. 2808КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 257. 2809Хрущёв и еврейский вопрос // Социалистический вестник, 1961, № 1, с. 20. 2810Слова Н.С. Хрущёва приведены в отчёте переводчика французской делегации Пьера Лошака: Realites, Paris, Mai 1957, p. 64-67, 101-104. — Мы цитируем их в обратном переводе «Социалистического вестника» (1961, № 1, с. 21).
Three months later, in August 1956, a delegation of the Canadian Communist Party visited the USSR – and it stated outright that it had “a special mission to achieve clarity on the Jewish question”. Thus, in the postwar years, the Jewish question was becoming a central concern of the western communists. “Khrushchev rejected all accusations of anti-Semitism as a slander against him and the party.” He named a number of Soviet Jews to important posts, “he even mentioned his Jewish daughter-in-law,” but then he “quite suddenly … switched to the issue of “good and bad features of each nation” and pointed out “several negative features of Jews”, among which he mentioned “their political unreliability.” Yet he neither mentioned any of their positive traits, nor did he talk about other nations.2811 In the same conversation, Khrushchev expressed his agreement with Stalin’s decision against establishing a Crimean Jewish Republic,  stating that such [Jewish] colonization of the Crimea would be a strategic military risk for the Soviet Union. This statement was particularly hurtful to the Jewish community. The Canadian delegation insisted on publication of a specific statement by the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Soviet Union about the sufferings of Jews, “but it was met with firm refusal” as “other nations and republics, which also suffered from Beria’s crimes against their culture and intelligentsia, would ask with astonishment why this statement covers only Jews?” (S. Schwartz dismissively comments: “The pettiness of this argumentation is striking.”2812) Yet it did not end at that. “Secretly, influential foreign Jewish communists tried” to obtain “explanations about the fate of the Jewish cultural elite”, and in October of the same year, twenty-six Western “progressive Jewish leaders and writers” appealed publicly to Prime-Minister Bulganin and “President” Voroshilov, asking them to issue “a public statement about injustices committed [against Jews] and the measures the goverment had designed to restore the Jewish cultural institutions.”2813 Yet during both the “interregnum” of 1953-1957 and then in Khrushchev’s period, the Soviet policies toward Jews were inconsistent, wary, circumspect and ambivalent, thus sending signals in all directions. In particular, the summer of 1956, which was filled with all kinds of social expectations in general, had also became the apogee  of Jewish hopes. One Surkov, the head of the Union of Writers, in a conversation with a communist publisher from New York City mentioned plans to establish a new Jewish publishing house, theater, newspaper and quarterly literary magazine; there were also plans to organize a countrywide conference of Jewish writers and cultural celebrities. It also noted  that a commission for reviving the Jewish literature in Yiddish had been already established. In 1956, “many Jewish writers and
2811J.B. Salsberg, Talks with Soviet Leaders on the Jewish Question // Jewish Life, Febr. 1957. — Цит. в переводе «Соц. вестника» (1961, № 1, с. 20). 2812С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…*, с. 250. 2813Там же*, с. 249-251.
journalists gathered in Moscow again.”2814 The Jewish activists later recalled that “the optimism inspired in all of us by the events of 1956 did not quickly fade away.”2815 Yet the Soviet government continued with its meaningless and aimless policies, discouraging  any development of an independent Jewish culture. It is likely that Khrushchev himself was strongly opposed to it. And then came new developments – the Suez Crisis, where Israel, Britain and France allied in attacking Egypt (“Israel is heading to suicide,” formidably warned the Soviet press), and the Hungarian Uprising, with its anti-Jewish streak, nearly completely concealed by history,2816 (resulting, perhaps, from the overrepresentation of Jews in the Hungarian KGB). (Could this be also one of the reasons, even if a minor one, for the complete absence of Western support for the rebellion? Of course, at this time the West was preoccupied with the Suez Crisis. And yet wasn’t it a signal to the Soviets suggesting that it would be better if the Jewish theme be kept hushed?) Then, a year later, Khrushchev finally overpowered his highly placed enemies within the party and, among others, Kaganovitch was cast down. Could it really be such a big deal? The latter was not the only one ousted and even then, he was not the principal figure among the dethroned; and he was definitely not thrown out because of his Jewishness. Yet “from the Jewish point of view, his departure symbolized the end of an era”. Some looked around and counted – “the Jews disappeared not only from the ruling sections of the party, but also from the leading governmental circles.”2817 It was time to pause and ponder thoroughly – what did the Jews really think about such new authorities? David Burg, who emigrated from the USSR in 1956, came upon a formula on how the Jews should treat the Soviet rule. (It proved quite useful for the authorities): “To some, the danger of anti-Semitism `from below´ seems greater than the danger of anti-Semitism `from above´”; “though the government oppresses us, it nevertherless allows us to exist. If, however, a revolutionary change comes, then during the inevitable anarchy of the transition period we will simply be exterminated. Therefore, let’s hold on to the government no matter how bad it is.”2818 We repeatedly encountered similar concerns in the 1930s – that the Jews should support the Bolshevik power in the USSR because without it their fate 2814Там же, с. 241, 272. 2815Ю. Штерн. Ситуация неустойчива и потому опасна: [Интервью] // “22”: Общественно-политический и литературный журнал еврейской интеллигенции из СССР в Израиле. Тель-Авив, 1984, № 38, с. 132. 2816Andrew Handler. Where Familiarity with Jews Breeds Contempt // Red Star, Blue Star: The Lives and Times of Jewish Students in Communist Hungary (1948-1956). New-York: Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 36-37. 2817Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина // Книга о русском еврействе, 1917-1967 (далее — КРЕ-2). Нью-Йорк: Союз Русских Евреев, 1968, с. 360-361. 2818David Burg. Die Judenfrage in Der Sowjetunion // Der Anti-kommunist, Miinchen, JuliAugust 1957, № 12, S.35.
would be even worse. And now, even though the Soviet power had further deteriorated, the Jews had no other choice but hold on to it as before. The Western world and particularly the United States always heeded such recommendations, even during the most strained years of the Cold War. In addition, socialist Israel was still full of communist sympathizers and could forgive the Soviet Union a lot for its role in the defeat of Hitler. Yet how then could Soviet anti-Semitism be interpreted? In this aspect, the recommendation of D. Burg stood up to the acute “social demand” – to move emphasis from the anti-Semitism of the Soviet government to the “anti-Semitism of the Russian people” – that ever-present curse. So now some Jews have even fondly recalled  the long-disbanded YevSek [the “Jewish Section” of the Central Committee, dismantled in 1930 when Dimanshtein and its other leaders were shot]. Even though back in the 1920s it seemed overly pro-Communist, the YevSek was “to certain extent a guardian of Jewish national interests … an organ that produced some positive work as well.”2819 In the meantime, Khrushchev’s policy remained equivocal; it is reasonable to assume that though Khrushchev himself did not like Jews, he did not want to fight against them, realizing the international political counter-productivity of such an effort. In 1957-1958, Jewish musical performances and public literary clubs were authorized and appeared in many cities countrywide.  (For example, “in 1961, Jewish literary soirees and Jewish song performances were attended by about 300,000 people.”2820) Yet at the same time, the circulation of Warsaw’s Volksstimme was discontinued in the Soviet Union, thus cutting the Soviet Jews off from an outside source of Jewish information.2821 In 1954, after a long break, Sholom Aleichem’s The Adventures of Mottel was again published in Russian, followed by several editions of his other books and their translations into other languages; in 1959 a large edition of his collected works was produced as well. In 1961 in Moscow, the Yiddish magazine Sovetish Heymland was established (though it strictly followed the official policy line). Publications of books by Jewish authors, who were executed in Stalin’s times, were resumed in Yiddish and Russian, and one even could hear Jewish tunes on the broadcasts of the AllSoviet Union radio.2822 By 1966, “about one hundred Jewish authors were writing in Yiddish in the Soviet Union,” and “almost all of the named authors simultaneously worked as Russian language journalists and translators,” and “many of them worked as teachers in the Russian schools.”2823 However, the Jewish theater did not re-open until 1966. In 1966, S. Schwartz defined the
2819С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…*, с. 238. 2820Там же, с. 283-287; КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 258. 2821С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 281. 2822Э. Финкелъштейн. Евреи в СССР: Путь в Двадцать первый век // Страна и мир: Обществ.-политический, экономический и культурно-философский журнал. Мюнхен, 1989, № 1, с. 65-66. 2823Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 379-380.
Jewish situation [in the USSR] as “cultural orphanhood.”2824 Yet another author bitterly remarks: “The general lack of enthusiasm and interest … from the wider Jewish population … toward those cultural undertakings …  cannot be explained solely by official policies ….” “With rare exceptions, during those years the Jewish actors performed  in half-empty halls. Books of   Jewish writers were not selling well.”2825 Similarly ambivalent, but more hostile policies of the Soviet authorities in Khrushchev’s period were implemented against the Jewish religion. It was a part of Khrushchev’s general anti-religious assault; it is well known how devastating it was for the Russian Orthodox Church. Since the 1930s, not a single theological school functioned in the USSR. In 1957 a yeshiva – a school for training rabbis – opened in Moscow. It accommodated only 35 students, and even those were being consistently pushed out under various pretexts such as withdrawal of residence registration in Moscow. Printing of prayer books and manufacturing of religious accessories was hindered. Up to 1956, before the Jewish Passover matzah was baked by state-owned bakeries and then sold in stores. Beginning in 1957, however, baking of matzah was obstructed and since 1961 it was banned outright almost everywhere. One day, the authorities would not interfere with receiving parcels with matzah from abroad, another day, they stopped the parcels at the customs, and even demanded recipients to express in the press their outrage against the senders.2826 In many places, synagogues were closed down. “In 1966, only 62 synagogues were functioning in the entire Soviet Union.”2827 Yet the authorities did not dare to shut down the synagogues in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev and in the capitals of the republics. In the 1960s, there used to be extensive worship services on holidays with large crowds of 10,000 to 15,000 on the streets around synagogues.2828 C. Schwartz notes that in the 1960s Jewish religious life was in severe decline, yet he large-mindedly reminds us that it was the result of the long process of secularization that began in Russian Jewry in the late 19th Century. (The process, which, he adds, has also succeeded in extremely non-communist Poland between the First and Second World Wars.2829) Judaism in the Soviet Union lacked a united control center; yet when the Soviet authorities wanted to  squeeze out a political show from the leading rabbis for foreign policy purposes, be it about the well-being of Judaism in the USSR or outrage against the nuclear war, the government was perfectly able to stage it.2830 “The Soviet authorities had repeatedly used Jewish religious leaders for foreign policy goals.” For example, “in November 1956 a
2824С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 280, 288. 2825Э. Финкелъштейн. Евреи в СССР: Путь в Двадцать первый век // Страна и мир, 1989, № 1, с. 66. 2826С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 304-308. 2827КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 259. 2828Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 358. 2829С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 290. 2830Там же, с. 294-296.
group of rabbis issued a protest against” the actions of Israel during the Suez War.2831 Another factor, which aggravated the status of Judaism in the USSR after the Suez War, was the growing fashionability of what was termed the “struggle against Zionism.” Zionism, being, strictly speaking, a form of socialism, should naturally had been seen as a true brother to the party of Marx and Lenin. Yet after the mid-1950s, the decision to secure the friendship of the Arabs drove the Soviet leaders toward persecution of Zionism. However, for the Soviet masses Zionism was a distant, unfamiliar and abstract phenomenon. Therefore, to flesh out this struggle, to give it a distinct embodiment, the Soviet government presented Zionism as a caricature composed of the characteristic and eternal Jewish images. The books and pamphlets allegedly aimed against Zionism also contained explicit anti-Judaic and anti-Jewish messages. If in the Soviet Union of 1920-1930s Judaism was not as brutally persecuted as the Russian Orthodox Christianity, then in 1957 a foreign socialist commentator noted how that year signified “a decisive intensification of the struggle against Judaism,” the “turning point in the struggle against the Jewish religion,” and that “the character of struggle betrays that it is directed not only against Judaism, but against the Jews in general.”2832 There was one stirring episode: in 1963 in Kiev, the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences published 12,000 copies of a brochure Unadorned Judaism in Ukrainian, yet it was filled with such blatant anti-Jewish caricatures that it provoked a large-scale international outcry, joined even by the communist “friends” (who were financially supported by Moscow), such as the leaders of the American and British communist parties, newspapers L’Humanite, L’Unita, as well as a pro-Chinese communist newspaper from Brussels, and many others. The UN Human Rights Commission demanded an explanation from its Ukrainian representative. The World Jewish Cultural Association called for the prosecution of the author and the cartoonist. The Soviet side held on for awhile, insisting that except for the drawings, “the book deserves a generally positive assessment.”2833 Finally, even Pravda had to admit that it was indeed “an ill-prepared … brochure” with “erroneous statements … and illustrations that may offend feelings of religious people or be interpreted as anti-Semitic,” a phenomenon that, “as is universally known, does not and cannot exist in our country.”2834 Yet at the same time Izvestia stated that although there were certain drawbacks to the brochure, “its main idea … is no doubt right.”2835 There were even several arrests of religious Jews from Moscow and Leningrad – accused of “espionage [conversations during personal meetings in
2831КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 258. 2832Антисемитский памфлет в Советском Союзе // Социалистический вестник, 1965, № 4, с. 67. 2833Антисемитский памфлет в Советском Союзе // Социалистический вестник*, 1965, № 4, с. 68-73. 2834В Идеологической комиссии при ЦК КПСС // Правда, 1964, 4 апреля, с. 4. 2835Об одной непонятной шумихе // Известия, 1964, 4 апреля, с. 4.
synagogues] for a  capitalistic state [Israel]” with synagogues allegedly used as “fronts for various criminal activities”2836 – to scare others more effectively.
Although there were already no longer any Jews in the most prominent positions, many still occupied influential and important second-tier posts (though there were exceptions: for example, Veniamin Dymshits smoothly ran Gosplan (the State Planning Committee) from 1962, while being at the same time the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of USSR and a member of Central Committee from 1961 to 19862837). Why, at one time the Jews were joining “NKVD and the MVD … in such numbers that even now, after all purges of the very Jewish spirit, a few individuals miraculously remained, such as the famous Captain Joffe in a camp in Mordovia.”2838 According to the USSR Census of 1959, 2,268,000 Jews lived in the Soviet Union. (Yet there were caveats regarding this figure: “Everybody knows … that there are more Jews in the Soviet Union than the Census showed,” as on the Census day, a Jew states his nationality not according to his passport, but any nationality he wishes.2839)  Of those, 2,162,000 Jews lived in the cities, i.e., 95,3% of total population – much more than 82% in 1926 or 87% in 1939.2840 And if we glance forward into the 1970 Census, the observed “increase in the number of Jews in Moscow and Leningrad is apparently caused not by natural growth but by migration from other cities (in spite of all the residential restrictions).” Over these 11 years, “at least several thousand Jews relocated to Kiev. The concentration of Jews in the large cities had been increasing for many decades.”2841 These figures are very telling for those who know about the differences in living standards between the urban and the rural populations in the Soviet Union. G. Rosenblum, the editor of the prominent Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, recalls an almost anecdotal story by Israeli Ambassador to Moscow Dr. Harel about his tour of the USSR in the mid-1960s. In a large kolkhoz near Kishinev he was told that “the Jews who work here want to meet [him]. [The Israeli] was very happy that there were Jews in the kolkhoz” (love of agriculture – a good sign for Israel). He  recounts: “Three Jews came to meet me … one was a cashier, another – editor of the kolkhoz’s wall newspaper and the third one was a kind of economic manager. I couldn’t find any other. So, what the Jews used to do [i.e. before], they are still doing.” G. Rosenblum
2836С. Шварц. Евреи в Советском Союзе…, с. 303. 2837Российская Еврейская Энциклопедия. 2-е изд., испр. и доп. М., 1994. Т. 1, с. 448. 2838Р. Рутман. Кольцо обид // Новый журнал, Нью-Йорк. 1974. № 117, с. 185. 2839И. Домальский. Технология ненависти // Время и мы (далее — ВМ): Международный журнал литературы и общественных проблем. Тель-Авив. 1978, № 26, с. 113-114. 2840КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 298, 300. 2841И. Ляст. Алия из СССР — демографические прогнозы // “22”, 1981, № 21, с. 112113.
confirms this: “Indeed, the Soviet Jews in their masses did not take to the physical work.”2842 L. Shapiro concludes, “Conversion of Jews to agriculture ended in failure despite all the efforts … of public Jewish organizations and … the assistance of the state.”2843 In Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev – the cities enjoying the highest living and cultural standards in the country, the Jews, according to the 1959 Census, constituted 3.9%, 5.8%, and 13.9 % of the population, respectively, which is quite a lot, considering that they accounted only for 1.1% of the entire population of the USSR.2844 So it was that this extremely high concentration of Jews in urban areas – 95% of all Soviet Jews lived in the cities – that made “the system of prohibitions and restrictions” particularly painful for them.  (As we mentioned in the previous chapter, this system was outlined back in the early 1940s.) And “although the restrictive rules have never been officially acknowledged and officials stoutly denied their existence, these rules and restrictions very effectively barred the Jews from many spheres of action, professions and positions.”2845 Some recall a disturbing rumor circulating then among the Jews: allegedly, Khrushchev said in one of his unpublished speeches that “as many Jews will be accepted into the institutions of higher education as work in the coal mines.”2846 Perhaps, he really just blurted it out in his usual manner, because such “balancing” was never carried out. Yet by the beginning of 1960s, while the absolute number of Jewish students increased, their relative share decreased substantially when compared to the pre-war period: if in 1936 the share of Jews among students was 7.5 times higher than that in the total population,2847 then by 1960s it was only 2.7 times higher. These new data on the distribution of students in higher and secondary education by nationality were published for the first time (in the post-war period) in 1963 in the statistical annual report, The National Economy of the USSR,2848 and a similar table was annually produced up to 1972. In terms of the absolute number of students in institutions of higher education and technical schools in the 1962-1963 academic year, Jews were fourth after the three Slavic nations (Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians), with 79,300 Jewish students in institutions of higher education out of a total 2,943,700 students (2.69%). In the next academic year 1963-1964, the number of Jewish students increased to 82,600, while the total number of students in the
2842Г. Розенблюм, В. Перельман. Крушение Чуда: причины и следствия*: [Беседа] // ВМ, Тель-Авив, 1977, № 24, с. 120. 2843Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 346. 2844КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 300. 2845Э. Финкельштейн. Евреи в СССР… // Страна и мир, 1989, № 1, с. 65. 2846Н. Шапиро. Слово рядового советского еврея // Русский антисемитизм и евреи: Сборник. Лондон, 1968, с. 55. 2847КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 190. 2848Народное хозяйство СССР в 1963 году: Статистический ежегодник. М.: Статистика, 1965, с. 579.
USSR reached 3,260,700 (2.53%). This share remained almost constant until the 1969-1970 academic year; 101,000 Jewish students out of total 4,549,900. Then the Jewish share began to decline and in 1972-1973 it was 1.91%: 88,500 Jewish students out of total 4,630,246.2849 (This decline coincided with the beginning of the Jewish immigration to Israel.) The relative number of Jewish scientists also declined in 1960s, from 9.5% in 1960 to 6.1% in 1973.2850 During those same years, “there were tens of thousands Jewish names in the Soviet art and literature,”2851 including 8.5% of writers and journalists, 7.7% of actors and artists, more than 10% of judges and attorneys, and about 15% doctors.2852 Traditionally, there were always many Jews in medicine, yet consider the accursed “Soviet psychiatry,” which in those years began locking up healthy people in mental institutions. And who were those psychiatrists?  Listing the “Jewish occupations,” M.I. Heifets writes: “`Psychiatry is a Jewish monopoly,´ a friend, a Jewish psychiatrist, told me, just before [my] arrest; `we began to get Russians only recently and even then as the result of an order´” [translator’s note: admission into medical residency training was regulated at local and central levels; here author indicates that admission of ethnically Russian doctors into advanced psychiatry training was mandated from the higher levels]. He provides examples: the Head Psychiatrist of Leningrad, Professor Averbukh, provides his expertise for the KGB in the “Big House”; in Moscow there was famous Luntz; in the Kaluga Hospital there was Lifshitz and “his Jewish gang.” When Heifetz was arrested, and his wife began looking for a lawyer with a “clearance,” that is, with a permission from the KGB to work on political cases, she “did not find a single Russian” among them as all such lawyers were Jews2853). In 1956, Furtseva, then the First Secretary of Moscow Gorkom (the City’s Party Committee), complained that in some offices Jews constitute more than half of the staff.2854 (I have to note for balance that in those years the presence of Jews in the Soviet apparatus was not detrimental. The Soviet legal machinery was in its essence stubbornly and hardheartedly anti-human, skewed against any man in need, be it a petitioner or just a visitor. So it often happened that the Russian officials in Soviet offices, petrified by their power, looked for any excuse to triumphantly turn away a visitor; in contrast, one could find much more understanding in a Jewish official and resolve an issue in a more humane way). L. Shapiro provides examples of complaints that in the national republics,
2849Народное хозяйство СССР в 1969 году. М., 1970, с. 690; Народное хозяйство СССР в 1972 году. М., 1972, с. 651. 2850И. Домальский. Технология ненависти // ВМ, Тель-Авив, 1978, №25, с. 120. 2851Э. Финкелъштейн. Евреи в СССР… // Страна и мир, 1989, № 1, с. 66. 2852А. Нов, Жд. Ньют. Еврейское население СССР: демографическое развитие и профессиональная занятость // Евреи в Советской России (1917-1967). Израиль: Библиотека «Алия», 1975, с. 180. 2853Михаил Хейфец. Место и время (еврейские заметки)*. Париж: Третья волна, 1978, с. 63-65, 67, 70. 2854Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 363.
the Jews were pushed out and displaced from the bureaucratic apparatus by native intelligentsia2855 – yet it was a common and officially-mandated system of preferences in the ethnic republics [to affirm the local cadres], and Russians were displaced just as well. This reminds me of an example from contemporary American life. In 1965, the New York Division of the American Jewish Committee had conducted a four-months-long unofficial interview of more than a thousand top officials in New York City banks. Based on its results, the American Jewish Committee mounted a protest because less than 3% of those surveyed were Jews, though they constituted one quarter of the population of – that is, the Committee demanded proportional representation. Then the chairman of the Association of Banks of New York responded that banks, according to law, do not hire on the basis of “race, creed, color or national origin” and do not keep records of such categories (that would be our accursed “fifth article” [the requirement in the Soviet internal passport – “nationality”]!). (Interestingly, the same American Jewish Committee had conducted a similar study about the ethnic composition of management of the fifty largest U.S. public utility services two years before, and in 1964 it in similar vein it studied industrial enterprises in the Philadelphia region.)2856 Yet let us return to the Soviet Jews. Many Jewish emigrants loudly advertised their former activity in the periodical-publishing and film-making industries back in the USSR. In particular, we learn from a Jewish author that “it was due to his [Syrokomskiy’s] support that all top positions in Literaturnaya Gazeta became occupied by Jews.”2857 Yet twenty years later we read a different assessment of the time: “The new anti-Semitism grew stronger … and by the second half of the 1960s it already amounted to a developed system of discreditation, humiliation and isolation of the entire people.”2858 So how can we reconcile such conflicting views? How can we reach a calm and balanced assessment? Then from the high spheres inhabited by economic barons there came alarming signals, signals that made the Jews nervous. “To a certain extent, Jewish activity in the Soviet Union concentrated in the specific fields of economy along a characteristic pattern, well-known to Jewish sociologists.”2859 By then, at the end of 1950s, Nikita [Khrushchev] suddenly realized that the key spheres of the Soviet economy are plagued by rampant theft and fraud. “In 1961, an explicitly anti-Semitic campaign was initiated against the ? theft of socialist property.”2860 Beginning in 1961, a number of punitive decrees of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR were passed. The first one dealt with 2855Там же. 2856New York Times, 1965, October 21, p. 47. 2857В. Перельман. О либералах в советских верхах // ВМ, Нью-Йорк, 1985, № 87, с. 147. 2858Э. Финкелъштейн. Евреи в СССР… // Страна и мир, 1989, № 1, с. 66. 2859Л. Шапиро. Евреи в Советской России после Сталина // КРЕ-2, с. 362. 2860КЕЭ, т. 8, с. 261.