Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee

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The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee , or JAFK or JAK for short ( Yiddish : ייִדישער אנטי־פאשיסטישער קאָמיטעטTranscription Jidišer anti-Fašistišer Komitet , Russian Еврейский антифашистский комитет short EWC ) was a group of publicly-known Jewish intellectuals in the Soviet Union , in the Second World War was created on the initiative of the Soviet government to worldwide support from Jewish circles for the Soviet war to win against the German Reich . At the beginning of 1942 the committee was assigned to the Soviet Information Office and was thus part of the Soviet propaganda. It was dissolved on November 20, 1948. In 1952 a political show trial of high-ranking former members followed.

history

On August 24, 1941, a meeting of "representatives of the Jewish people" took place in Moscow , at which, among others, the actor and theater director Solomon Michoels and the writers Ilya Ehrenburg and David Bergelson gave their speeches. This meeting met with a great response at international level. In the USA , the Jewish Council for Russian War Relief was set up under the chairmanship of Albert Einstein . In Palestine, the radio station broadcast a Hebrew response to the appeal from Moscow on September 28, 1941, and a public committee in support of the Soviet Union in its fight against fascism , later known as the Fifth League, was established.

On April 7, 1942, the committee published its first appeal to Jews around the world , signed by 47 public figures. Solomon Michoels was appointed chairman of the JAFK and secretary was the journalist Schachne Epstein . On May 24, 1942, at the second meeting of the “representatives of the Jewish people”, a global appeal for donations was made to collect money for the purchase of 1,000 tanks and 500 aircraft for the Red Army . The Yiddish-language JAFK newspaper was named " Ejnikejt " (German: "Unity"). Its first edition appeared on July 6, 1942 in Kuibyshev , after which it was published every three months. In February 1943, at the general meeting of the committee, Michoels gave a shocking address on the situation of Jews in areas liberated by the Red Army.

In 1943 Michoels and Itzik Feffer - the first official representatives of Soviet Jews to be allowed to travel to the West - went on a seven-month trip to the United States, Mexico , Canada, and the United Kingdom to solicit reinforcements. In the US they were welcomed by a National Reception Committee chaired by Albert Einstein and BZ Goldberg, son-in-law of Sholom Aleichem , and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee . The largest pro-Soviet gathering ever in the United States of America took place on July 8th at the Polo Grounds when 50,000 people attended Michoels, Feffer, Fiorello LaGuardia , Sholem Asch and Rabbi Stephen Wise , chairman of the American Jewish Congress , listened. Among others, they met Chaim Weizmann , Charlie Chaplin , Marc Chagall , Paul Robeson and Lion Feuchtwanger .

In addition to war loans for the Russian War ($ 16 million in the US, $ 15 million in England, 1 million in Mexico, 750,000 in Palestine ), other aid was also contributed: machinery, medical equipment, medicines, ambulances, clothing. On July 16, 1943, Pravda reported : "Michoels and Feffer have received news from Chicago that a special aid conference has launched a campaign to fund one thousand ambulances for the benefit of the Red Army." The visit also shook the American public on the need to intervene in the European war.

persecution

Some members of the committee were verbal supporters of the State of Israel, which was founded in 1948 and which gave Stalin only short-term support. The international contacts of the Jewish diaspora , especially with the USA, made them repeatedly, especially at the beginning of the Cold War , victims of accusations ranging from allegations of disloyalty to suspicion of espionage activities.

Contacts with Jewish organizations in America also pursued the plan to simultaneously publish a black book in the USA and the Soviet Union in which the Holocaust and the participation of Jews in the resistance struggle were to be documented. In 1946 a black book was published in New York , but it was only based on a small part of the documents collected and was not the responsibility of the JAK. The plan for a joint issue could not be realized. The project ultimately failed because of the ban by Stalin, who argued that the book contained serious political errors - Jews were not the only victims of the German occupation. Although a manuscript was created and even set under the editorial direction first by Ilya Ehrenburg and Wassili Grossman , then by the latter alone, the completed sentence was destroyed in 1948 when the political situation of the Soviet Jews deteriorated dramatically. This black book was published in 1980 in Russian in Israel, but never in the Soviet Union. A full edition could only be published after it had ended.

In January 1948 Michoels was killed in a mysterious car accident in Minsk . In November 1948, the Soviet authorities launched a campaign to liquidate what remained of Jewish culture. The members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested. They have been charged with disloyalty, the bourgeoisie, cosmopolitanism, and planning to establish a Jewish republic in Crimea to serve US interests.

In January 1949, the Soviet mass media launched a major campaign against " homeless cosmopolitans, " which was unequivocally aimed at Jews. At that time, Markisch stated: "Hitler wanted to destroy us physically, Stalin wants to do it spiritually." In August 1952, at least thirteen prominent Jewish writers were executed on the so-called Night of the Murdered Poets .

The 1953 doctors' conspiracy , during which mainly Jewish doctors were alleged to have forged a plot to poison the Soviet political and military leadership, also had clearly anti-Semitic features.

List of prominent JAFK members

Over time, the JAFK increased in size. According to Solzhenitsyn ("200 Years Together"), the JAFC grew to around 70 members.

  • Viktor Alter , leader of the BUND, spokesman for the JAFK autumn to December 4, 1941. Shot on February 17, 1942 in Kuibyshev .
  • David Bergelson , writer. Shot on August 12, 1952.
  • Solomon Bregman , Deputy Minister for State Control. Died in prison on August 23, 1953.
  • Ilja Ehrenburg , writer. Died in Moscow on August 31, 1967.
  • Schachno Epstein , secretary and editor of the newspaper Eynikeyt . Died in Moscow in July 1945.
  • Henryk Erlich , leader of the BUND, spokesman for the JAFK Fall to December 4, 1941. On May 14, 1942, suicide in prison.
  • Itzik Feffer , also Icik F., poet (former member of the Bund ). Shot on August 12, 1952.
  • Wassili Semjonowitsch Grossman , writer. Died in September 1964.
  • David Hofstein , poet. Shot on August 12, 1952.
  • Joseph Jussufowitsch (Yusefowitsch), historian. Shot on August 12, 1952.
  • Aaron Katz , General of the Stalin Military Academy. Died in 1971.
  • Perez Markisch , poet. Shot on August 12, 1952.
  • Leib Kwitko , poet. Shot on August 12, 1952.
  • Nachum Lewin , journalist. Executed on November 23, 1950.
  • Solomon Losowski , secretary of the JAFC, former Soviet deputy minister for foreign policy and the head of the Soviet information office. Shot on August 12, 1952.
  • Solomon Michoels , also Slojme M., chairman of JAFK, actor-director of the Jewish State Theater Moscow. Murdered in a bogus car accident on January 12, 1948.
  • Shmuel Persov , writer. Shot on November 23, 1950.
  • Boris Schimeliowitsch , chief physician. Shot on August 12, 1952.
  • Lina Stern , physiologist, the only woman who was a full member of the “Soviet Academy of Sciences”; sole survivor of the interrogations or trials that led to the executions from November 23, 1950 to August 12, 1952. Died in Moscow on March 8, 1968.
  • Leon Talmi , journalist and translator. Shot on August 12, 1952.
  • Emilia Teumin , publisher. Shot on August 12, 1952.
  • Ilja Watenberg , publisher. Shot on August 12, 1952.
  • Tschajka Vatenberg-Ostrowskaja , translator. Shot on August 12, 1952.
  • Benjamin Suskin (Zuskin), also Weniamin S., actor, shot on August 12, 1952.

literature

  • Frank Grüner: Patriots and cosmopolitans. Jews in the Soviet state 1941–1953 . Böhlau, Cologne 2008 ISBN 3-412-14606-4 (= contributions to the history of Eastern Europe, 43) (additional dissertation phil. Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg 2005).
  • Joshua Rubenstein (Ed.): Stalin's Secret Pogrom. The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee . Yale University Press, New Haven 2001, ISBN 0-300-08486-2 .
  • Arno Lustiger : Rotbuch: Stalin and the Jews. The tragic story of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the Soviet Jews . Structure, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-351-02478-9 .
  • Arno Lustiger: The black book on the criminal mass extermination of the Jews by the fascist German conquerors in the temporarily occupied territories of the Soviet Union and in the fascist extermination camps of Poland during the war of 1941–1945 . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1994, ISBN 3-498-01655-5 (Original: . Черная книга о злодейском повсеместном убийстве евреев немецко-фашистскими захватчиками во временно оккупированных районах Советского Союза и в лагерях Польши во время войны 1941-1945 гг ed the original. Ilja Ehrenburg , Wassili Grossman. [Complete version]
    • abridged first publication in Russian: Tarbut, Jerusalem 1980 [without the Lithuanian reports])
  • Encyclopedia Judaica , Volume 3, pp. 62-65.
  • Donald Rayfield: Stalin and his executioners . Translated by Hans Freundl and Norbert Juraschitz. Karl Blessing, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89667-181-2 .
  • Samuel A. Portnoy: Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter. Two Heroes and Martyrs for Jewish Socialism . KTAV, Jersey City 1990, ISBN 0-88125-357-X .
  • Erich Später : On the history of JAFK . In: Konkret , September 9, 2012, pp. 22–24.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Frank Grüner: Patriots and Cosmopolitans. Jews in the Soviet state 1941–1953 . Böhlau, p. 58.