Ilya Watenberg

Ilya Semjonowitsch Watenberg ( Russian Илья Семёнович Ватенберг ; born 1887 in Stanislau ( Galicia ); executed on August 12, 1952 in Moscow ) was a leading member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFK) .

Life

Ilja Watenberg was born in 1887 as the son of a Jewish forest worker. He graduated from high school in his hometown, then studied law in Lviv and Vienna and obtained a doctorate in economics and law. He had a law firm in Stanislau until 1914, after which he lived in Vienna until 1920, from where he emigrated to America.

Since his youth Watenberg was a member of the Zionist - socialist workers party Poale Zion . After they split up, he joined the communist wing. In the USA he also became a member of the Central Committee of the Left Poale Zion . At the Second Comintern Congress in Moscow in 1921, the latter accepted all 21 restrictive admission conditions formulated by Lenin . He wrote for communist newspapers and tried to persuade as many members as possible to convert to the CPS , which he succeeded in 1924. At the same time he translated left political literature from English, German and other languages ​​into Yiddish . In 1925 he wrote a school book about the October Revolution for the numerous Yiddish socialist schools.

Watenberg had been visiting the Soviet Union since 1926, and in 1929 he organized a delegation of American agricultural and settlement experts to the Yiddish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan . These trips took place in coordination with the government in Moscow. In 1933 he finally moved to the Soviet Union. There he became the responsible control editor (pre-censor) at the state publishing house for foreign literature.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union , he worked in the then founded Jewish anti-fascist committee (JAFK) . Because of his political merits, language skills and contacts abroad, especially in the USA, Watenberg was an ideal JAFK functionary. He wrote numerous articles in the Ejnikayt newspaper published by the JAFC .

He was arrested on January 24, 1949, and shot together with other members of the JAFK on August 12, 1952.

literature

• Arno Lustiger : Rotbuch: Stalin and the Jews. The tragic story of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the Soviet Jews. Structure, Berlin 1998, 2nd edition 2002, page 414, ISBN 3-7466-8049-2 .