SOVIET JEWS OR SOVIET JEWRY?
Lestschinsky, Jacob
SOVIET JEWS OR SOVIET JEWRY? By Jacob Lestschinsky IS there a Jewish community in Soviet Russia, with distinct organic forms of communal life or are then only a largo number of Individual...
...THE JEWS OP RUSSIA This article la doubly important because of the light It casta on a generally unknown subject: the life of a minority, the Jewish people...
...Were all the Jews who once lived there alive today, the USSR would now have a population »f some five and a half million Jews...
...In Dniepropetrovsk net even Jewish children survived...
...how others begged him to send them phylacteries...
...Since then the USSR has acquired large portions of Poland and Roumania and all of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia...
...I have always taken the largest figure given, although frequently the same newspaper in later issues gave much lower figures...
...The Russlsn Government frequently praises Itself for the treatment it accords its minorities...
...In the meantime the great indust ialization of Russia began to' absorb all the economically displaced Jews, with the result that the Biro-Bidjan colonization lost its economic justification...
...Soviet authorities aasure the world that minorities are allowed full rights Including self-delermlnstlon...
...Civil engineer*, technicians, teachers, dentists, many officials and workers are making inquiries about the place...
...It means that the whole future generation of Jews will have no idea of Judaism, Jewish history, Jewish life in...
...In Soviet Russia there is only one sheet, appearing three times a week, and it contains almost exclusively matter of general interest...
...Ths city had a Christian population of several hundred thoussnd, sven under German occupation...
...The title is: "The Mask Behind Which He Shoots...
...No Jewish periodical from any country, in any language is available to them...
...Note the racialistic features of the cartoon, the Nazi stereotype* of Jewish "traits": the skull cap, long heard, hooked nose, the money bag with the star of /ion and the dollar sign in the middle...
...This was in keeping with the Russian foreign policy during that period...
...They are rot concerned, or appear not to be concerned, with seeking any meaning or content for their Jewish existence...
...According to the Communist press, Jews in Biro-Bidjan speak Russian, and do not stress their Jewishness in any way...
...In the whole of the USSR there are today five or six Jewish schools, sll of them in cities only recently annexed t<> the Union, such ss Vilna, Kovno, ami Czcrnowitc...
...The same B. Z. Goldberg describes how a Jewish calendar was literally snatched out of his hands by an eager Jew...
...Do the Jews of Soviet Russia possess institutions, a press, a literature of their own in whatever language it may be...
...Unfortunately the answer to the question is clear...
...e i Is there a Jewish life in Soviet Russii...
...Official Communist sources are completely silent on the subject On the basis of information published in the Communist Yiddish newspaper, Einigkeit, in Moscow, regarding the number of Jews in some sixty municipalities of European Russia, it appears that this area today has a remaining Jewish population of at most 900,000...
...ThERE is a tendency among certain groups in Soviet Russia to settle in BiroBidjan...
...B. Z. Goldberg, of the Jewish Day, who spent over six ironths traveling through Soviet Russis, has told us the whole truth...
...The following is .taken from the June 27, 1946 issue of Kinigkeit, published in Moscow: We are told that in Dniepropetrovsk (formerly Ekaterinoslav) there remained after the evacuation over 20,r 000 Jews who were slaughtered by the bestial Fascists...
...This is -especially true of the Ukrainians...
...they ar^ taking a great part in the economic rehabituation of the country...
...how a Kiev Rabbi begged him with tears in his eyes to send him s prsyer shawl...
...Thus we are told that, Jews are good Soviet patriots...
...In America even semi-assimilated Jews have their Jewish periodicals in English and they-seek a content for their Jewish life...
...Palest in j and in other countries...
...Most of the Jews of the Soviet Ukraine and Soviet White Russia and especially of the former Polish districts, former Rumanian districts, Lithuania and Latvia, remained on the...
...What are the results of eighteen years of colonization in Biro-Bidjan...
...The local non-Jewish population took a very active psrt in the extermination of these Jews...
...One does not have to go very far for evidence of the total absenca of any Jewish life in Soviet Russia...
...These are the crucial questions in any appraisal of Russian Jewry...
...Goldberg adds that there isn't a single organized Jewish communbity in Russia to undertake even such simple responsibilities as providing the Jews with prayer shswls or Calendars...
...three million Jews who were annihilated by the Nazis with the active collaboration of the Ukrainians, Byelo-Russians, Lithuanians, Letts, Estonians and Rumanians...
...During the early years as many as two thirds oi the settlers returned to their original homes...
...All they saved were ten to fifteen Jews...
...In this country Jewish leadership is roncerned with increasing thi number of Jewish children attending Jewish institutions and/with improving Jewish education...
...There are very few Jews in the provincial districts of European Russia, so that 100,000 is a generous figure...
...It is amasing that while in bourgeois France the Christian population managed to rescue a full half of their Jewish neighbors, snd while in Belgium and Holland additional thousands of Jews were rescued with Christisn help, in the Soviet countries hardly one pervfiit of the Jewish people was saved...
...But in all the issues af Kinigkeit during the past two years there has not been a single item about Jewish education...
...These, then, are the tragic facts which furnish the replies to our opening questions...
...According to information from the same source it may be estimated that there are about five or six hundred thousand Jews in the Asistic part of the USSR...
...But even these were not evacuated completely...
...they uiK faithful to the regime...
...However, were these Jews imbued with any ideals of preserving Jewish forms of life or Jewish culture, one might hope that there was promise for the future...
...Nor wot tht guilt of local citizens merely passivity...
...There i.i very little about Jews and even that m of a peculiar nature...
...hi those sixty municipalities, which includa cities like Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Odessa, Dniepropetrovsk, Minsk, Vilna, Kovno, Riga, Vitebsk, Homel, Berdichev, Zhitomir, Lemberg and other large Jewish communities, there is an aggregate of s.ome 800,000 Jews...
...But how many fews are there today in the USS...
...There are probably 120,000 now...
...In the whole of the Soviet Union, then, there are no more than one ~nd a half million Jews, Thus nearly four million Jews have perished, including over two million of former Polish, Rumanian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian domicile...
...The Stalinists who frequently pretend (when the Soviet line so dictates) that they are "friends" of the Jewish people, and who vocally express sympathy with the aims of the Zionist movement, in these cartoon* reveal themselves for what they are: amoral, opportunistic jackals of Soviet Russia who are without pity for the plight of persecuted peoples and who are totally without political morality or scruples...
...They are isolated from World Jewry...
...The great decrease in the number of Soviet Jewry, the rapidly accelerating trend of assimilation, the complete absence of any organized Jeutish life or activity, and finally the failure of the BiroKid jun experiment, indicate all too clearly the direction in which the Jews of Soviet Russia are moving...
...By Jacob Lestschinsky IS there a Jewish community in Soviet Russia, with distinct organic forms of communal life or are then only a largo number of Individual Jews...
...The total population, according to the census of 1939, consisted of 108,000...
...On the day when the heroic Red Army liberated Dniepbropetrovsk, there were found in the city some ten or fifteen Jewish inhabitants who were rescued through various accidents and especially thanks to ths assistance of nearby neighbors...
...In countries where the Christians sympathised with the Jews many more ware saved, especially Jewish children...
...In 1928, when the colonization of that area began, there were still hundreds of thoussnds of economically uprooted Jews, whom the suthorities hoped to turn into farmers...
...The few Jew* in Russia who crave for a Jewish life, for Jewish books, for Information about Palestine, cannot satisfy these cravings...
...The cartoon was inspired by the anti-Jewish pogromu at the time which the Communists characterized falsely as being actually Jewish pogroms against Arabs...
...If Russia were to ooen her doors for emigration, Jews by the hun- dreds of thousands would .flee for the same reasons that Jews are fleeing Poland...
...The artist is William Cropper, veteran Communist...
...They are integrated not only with American Jewry, but to an extent with world Jewry as well and they are preoccupied with general Jewish problems* The one and a half million Soviet Jews have not a single Jewish periodical ia the Ruaslan language...
...Lestchlnsky's article shows how lews actually fare eader the Soviet regime...
...spot and were subsequently murdered there...
...One searches in vain through the Communist Jewish newspaper, Einigkeit, for a single item on Jewish communal life such ss wa find in Jewish publications in any language elsewhere in the world...
...It may be doubted if even that grim wave of colonization will continue for long...
...We may welcome the fact that Jews are not in need of separate hospitals and have full access to the convenience of general hospitals, or that aged Jews can die without discrimination in the same room with non-Jews, but Jewish life is thereby destroyed...
...Their letters convey the feeling, however, that they are lees concerned with going to Biro-Bidjan, than with leaving the sites where their relatives were killed and where they are likely to come into frequent contact with the murderers...
...Relying on information from official sources, one is led to the conclusion that there are at most 20,000 or 22,000 Jews in Biro-Bidjan today...
...It appeared in the Communist Morning t'reiheit, the daily Yiddish version of the Daily Worker in New York, on September 4, 1929...
...Here is concise picture of the national decline of Soviet Jewry...
...An estimated 200,000 Jewish soldiers in the Red Army fell during the war...
...There are no Jewish political groups because there eon be no parties under a dictatorship except the parly in power...
...Ftwer Jewith children war* saved by aoWems in tht USSK (asm even in Poland whoro tht Girman* found m favorable omU~ Stmitit atmotphor* for tJUtr program «f extermination...
...According to the census of January, 1939, 3,020,000 citizens recorded their nationality as Jewish...
...We are still in the dark as to the reasons which prompted the Soviet Government to offer Biro-Bidjan to the Jews...
...In the Unted States, too, Jewish children attend public schools, but soma twenty-five percent sttend Jewish schools as well...
...What are the probable reasons for this largo number...
...We may safely assume that approximately another quarter of a million Jews listed their nationality as Russian or Ukrainian, There ia no religious or racial census in Russia...
...Among the collaborators of Hitler were many whose inbred antiSemitism had not disappeared even after thirty years under the Hammer and Sickle...
...In this country we have a Jewish press read by hundreds of thousands of Jews whose children often hear from their parents about the contents of that press and about Jewish events all over the world...
...The aether m a well-known authority em Jewish aabjerts asm has written many for publications...
...What is most important is that there is no Jewish education...
...But Russia is hermetically seal** ed and the only place to which a Jew can escape from the areas which are soaked with Jewish blood is Biro-Bidjan...
...Ia there a living bond between them and Jewish communities elsewhere in the world...
...He says in The Day of August It, 1946: "There are no Jewish districts in tha cities and towns, there are no specifically Jewish occupations, there are no Jewish hospitals, no Jewish Old Folks Homes, no Jewish clubs, no Jewish parties, no Jewish philanthropies, no Jewish educational institutions...
...About half a million Jews died in ths Asiatic provinces where twice that number were deported after evacuation from previous Polish and Roumuiian regions as well as from the Soviet Ukraine and Soviet White Rani a. This leaves over This cartoon does not come from the Nazi press...
...In the meantime there is little concrete achievement in Biro-Bidjan, the noisy Communist press notwithstanding...
...M wss soon realized however, that the colonization of that waste, which was twenty days journey from Moscow, was bound to be s slow process...
...Thus the Jews constitute no more than 16 or 18% of the irdjabitants of BiroBidjan...
...Only Jewish officials and skilled laborers with their families were evacuated before the advancing Germans, along with non-Jews of similar categories...
...In the Soviet Union...
...It now transpires that there was no evacuation by the Soviet authorities of Jews as Jews in order to save them from extermination...
...Let us examine available facta regarding the Jews in Soviet Russja...
...They become all the more important because of the increasing influence of the USSR on Poland, Roumania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, which contain a Jewish population of 'some three quarters of a million and whose communal life is likely to come more and more under Communist control...
...Such is not the case...
...This Is not an isolated ease...
Vol. 30 • March 1947 • No. 10
