With the Yiddish Writers in Siberia
Turner, Bernard
At the end of March 1949 a number of us were transferred from Camp Zaiarsk to "our" headquarters at Bratsk, Siberia. We were each given two kilo and 400 grams of black bread, four herrings...
...The order soon came that Markish was to be put in solitary confinement...
...His frightful appearance did not prevent me from recognizing him at once...
...He was clothed in rags, his trousers held up by a string, from which dangled a military mess kit...
...We were each given two kilo and 400 grams of black bread, four herrings and 60 grams of sugar—our food for the four days' march...
...Translated by AARON ANTONOVSKY...
...About 2,000 men and women had assembled at the point of departure...
...IN THE MEANTIME, mass arrests continued, particularly of Jews who were not Soviet citizens...
...Lazar Kaganovich the sole Jew in the Politburo] refused even to talk about the matter...
...We made 40 kilometers a day...
...Terribly weary, I searched for a place to lie down...
...His glasses, those characteristic Feffer-glasses, were broken, kept together by bits of string...
...There were 36 Bernard Turner, now in Israel, was Moscow correspondent of the London Daily Mail and Davar of Tel Aviv in 1941-43...
...He had composed a great epic poem of sorrow and suffering, "The Third Roman Empire...
...3-37...
...He was freedafter Stalin's death and, after much tra vail and wandering, escaped the SovietUnion and reached Israel...
...During the week we remained together we talked at great length...
...At this stage, came the arrest of the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which set off a total war against Jews and Jewish culture in the Soviet Union...
...At the end of March 1949 a number of us were transferred from Camp Zaiarsk to "our" headquarters at Bratsk, Siberia...
...Jews of "good" appearance could remain in the Polish Army, but would be compelled to change their names to pure Polish and eradicate any trace of their Jewish identity...
...On parting from Bergelson and Feffer, I told them of my plans to escape this hell...
...This was the noted Jewish poet, colonel in the Red Army, Itzik Feffer...
...He was also charged with having cooperated with Zionists and Bundists in New York...
...We arrived at Bratsk on the fifth day...
...At the slightest movement, he would lose his balance, falling to the stone floor...
...Bruised again and again, he would be compelled to right the stool and continue sitting...
...They made the following request of me: Should you ever meet Ilya Ehrenbourg, ask him in our names to place flowers on the unknown graves of those innocents murdered, in whose martyrs' deaths he had a goodly share...
...The camp, covering an area of some 800 yards, was surrounded by a ten foot high wooden fence, topped by 14 strands of barbed wire...
...In the presence of the chairman of the Soviet Writers' Union, Nikolai Tikhonov, I transmitted to Ehrenbourg, in their very words, the Iast wish of his comrades of the pen, Bergelson and Feffer...
...I wept silently at this sight...
...Feffer, Bergelson and the other Jewish Communists were subjected to bestial torture in the course of their investigations...
...The newly-created situation was often discussed in their circles...
...Machinegun towers loomed from each of the four corners...
...Feffer and Bergelson raised this question at a closed meeting, which included Deputy Foreign Minister Lozovsky, former Soviet Ambassador to Rome, A. Stern (then on the faculty of the institute), Ilya Ehrenbourg and Shlomo Mikhoels...
...Our way lay through dense forests...
...Subsequently, Bergelson went on to say, it became crystal-clear that the anti-Semitic policy in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union had been fully sanctioned by Stalin and the Politburo...
...Ehrenbourg turned pale as chalk...
...Unhappily, the NKVD discovered the manuscript (some 6-7 notebooks, closely written) during an inspection and sent it on to Moscow...
...On the wooden bunks that lined the barrack walls, human bodies were crowded together, like bundles of rags...
...Among those participating in these gather...
...This was the last trace of Markish...
...In 1943 he was sentenced to ten years' forced labor...
...His penetrating glance and intelligent face aroused a feeling of trust...
...All his limbs shaking, nervously biting his blue lips, he stared vacantly about, mumbling to himself...
...Political prisoners and "enemies of the people" were mixed with the worst of common criminals...
...A foreign service training institute was opened in Moscow, headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Dekanozov (who later shared the fate of his comrade, Beria...
...The marching columns were surrounded by armed guards, aided by dogs trained to attack any stragglers among the slaves...
...There can be no doubt that Lozovsky was tortured to death...
...He didn't even hestitate to turn Lozovsky, his closest friend, over to the NKVD...
...Bergelson told me that, among other things, he himself was subjected to the well-known treatment of being seated on a two-legged stool and compelled to remain there 20 hours at a stretch...
...His physical state was such, it seemed, that he was good for nothing but to be the barracks-sweep...
...In 1943 I had met Feffer and the famous actor Shlomo Mikhoels in the Grand Hotel in Kuibishev, on the eve of their departure for America as representatives of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee...
...He later conferred with Foreign Minister Vishinsky, who denied the very existence of any dis crimination against Jews...
...Soon after our arrival, I was swallowed up into one of the most overcrowded barracks...
...The article here printed appeared originally in Di Goldene Keyt, Tel Aviv, No...
...Bergelson and Feffer told me that this policy, so diametrically opposed to the Communist idea, was one with which neither they nor other Jewish Communist writers and cultural figures could make their peace...
...barracks and 8 guard tents in the camp area...
...Approaching, I asked him where I could lie down...
...25 (1956) , pp...
...Lozovsky vainly brought the matter to the attention of Dekanozov...
...He is now engaged in writing a book about his experiences...
...The anti-Semitic course was obvious to all...
...This policy was now being systematically followed not only in the Soviet Union, but in those lands of East Europe in which Communist regimes had been established...
...My eyes met those of the old man...
...I learned from them that Peretz Markish [another Soviet Yiddish writer] had also been in this camp...
...More than once the stool broke, and another would be brought...
...Itzik Feffer, the prominent Soviet Jewish poet,, now lay in the filth...
...A lost soul, he began to back away, and fled from me...
...The institute had a rigid quota for Jewish students...
...Turning to one of the lying figures, the old man said: "Khaver Feffer, would you be good enough to move a bit, so that this man could lie down...
...Feffer recalled having seen Lozovsky in the Lubianka prison: his arm broken, his face a gaping wound...
...The name and sight of the crouching figure shook me to the very core...
...FEFFER and Bergelson told me that their arrest was a culmination of developments that went back to 1944...
...Lozovsky had informed Bergelson that Wanda Wasilewska, member of the Supreme Soviet and wife of Deputy Foreign Minister A. Korneichuk, who had easy access to Stalin, had had a major share in the "new" anti-Jewish policy...
...Later I learned that the old man, the barracks-sweep, was David Bergelson, the great Soviet Yiddish writer...
...The chief witness against those arrested, accused of Jewish nationalism and Zionism, was none other than Ilya Ehrenbourg...
...This went on for days, weeks...
...SIX YEARS LATER, in October 1955, I had the opportunity—and the satisfaction— of fulfilling this last wish of Bergelson and Feffer...
...Rumor had it that Lozovsky had committed suicide, but Feller quite correctly pointed out that it was impossible for anyone to have committed suicide in the Lubianka, prisoners having been deprived of every conceivable means for doing so...
...He got a note to Bergelson that a new trial was being readied for him...
...It was then that they learned for the first time of the anti-Semitic policy pursued by party and state in the Soviet Union...
...Finally, stools of particularly durable material were brought...
...Feffer, moreover, was accused, he told me, of having had intimate con tact with the [Jewish Socialist] Bund leaders Ehrlich and Alter during their stay in Kuibishev, notwithstanding the fact that he, Feffer, had been in Tashkent at the time...
...Only at night could we warm our frozen, weary limbs at the fires built in the melting snows of spring...
...In 1944 the Soviet Foreign Ministry suffered from a dearth of diplomats, intensified by the expanding relations with the West...
...It was at the Vienna airport...
...He also had a hand in the arrest of many other Jews, including his relatives, doubtless in the attempt to save his own skin...
...The unhappy Feffer was now a skeleton of a man...
...His lips began to tremble, foaming at the mouth...
...ings was Ilya Ehrenbourg...
...Those unable to find place on the bunks lay on the earthen floor...
...The din made by its more than 500 inmates was like that of a beehive...
...Jewish Communist circles learned of a top secret decree issued by the Central Committee of the Party that Jews, Communist or not, were to be excluded from the Polish and Czechoslovakian "national armies" which had been formed by Colonel Berling and General Svoboda on Soviet soil...
...The decree expressly stated that every Jew of typical Jewish appearance (a "Jewish nose," curly hair, Yiddish accent) was to be excluded from the Polish Army of Liberation, the Red Army and the NKVD units attached to the Polish Army...
...NOT FAR from the faucet, almost at the door, an old Jew sat on a stool...
...All the peoples of the vastness of Russia were represented in this sea of humanity...
Vol. 4 • January 1957 • No. 1
