Slanted History
FINK, REUBEN
Slanted History Pictorial History of the Jewish People. By Nathan Ausubel. Crown. 346 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by Reuben Fink Vice Chairman, Jewish Information Bureau The only way to review a book...
...This is simply not true...
...Ausubel does occasionally call attention to some of the disabilities—• economic, religious and cultural—suffered by the Jews under Soviet rule...
...The section of the book dealing with Birobidjan is replete with loose and sweeping statements...
...The rest are pro-Soviet...
...Reviewed by Reuben Fink Vice Chairman, Jewish Information Bureau The only way to review a book like this is to point out the errors...
...Discussing the laws adopted by the...
...Ausubel makes his initial error...
...Mr...
...Nor does the author seem to be acquainted with the writings of informed anti-Communists like Jerzy Gliksman, Julius Margolin and Elinor Lipper...
...Of the eleven books listed, two have little to do with the Jews and one is impartial...
...Ausubel tells us all about the beginnings and early progress of this colonization project...
...Religious persecution is handled very gingerly...
...Ausubel's bibliography of English-language sources is revealing...
...Solomon M. Schwarz's The Jews in the Soviet Union, by far the most authoritative book on the subject, is not even mentioned...
...In the very first paragraph, Mr...
...I will confine myself here to the section, "Under the Soviets," which is unfortunately typical of the book as a whole...
...On the contrary, the nationalization and socialization process had the effect of sentencing two-thirds of the Jewish population to starvation...
...Ausubel omits the fact that, of the 19,135 immigrants to Birobidjan between 1928 and 1933, no less than 11,450 (or more than 58 per cent) subsequently left...
...The facts are that, even in the short period of its existence, the Kerensky regime actually abolished the Pale of Settlement and implemented the repeal of all restrictions against national minorities...
...The rest of the book, though less politically tendentious, is also filled with inaccuracies...
...Russian Provisional Government abolishing the Pale of Settlement and other anti-Jewish restrictions, he says: "Nothing was done to implement [them] until after the Bolshevik Revolution...
...However, he always seems eager to "explain," if not to condone, these blemishes in his otherwise rosyhued picture...
...there is not a Yiddish school in the city of Birobidjan...
...Why does he fail to mention its eventual miserable collapse...
...Ausubel's treatment of Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union is incredible: "It is precisely this process of cultural assimilation and biological amalgamation which largely accounts for the steady disintegration of the Jewish group life, culture and identity in the U.S.S.R...
...It is equally untrue to assert that most Russian Jews greeted Bolshevism "with hope for the future...
...The decision to inculcate the Yiddish language in Birobidjan is not being carried out...
...In its issue of August 10, 1936, the Yiddish Communist newspaper Emes complained that "Jewish culture is developing very slowly...
...He ignores altogether the despicable role of the Jewish Communists (Yevseks), who bear the primary responsibility for these repressions and even succeeded in abolishing the famous Hebrew theater, Habimah...
...The author does not seem to have heard of the arrest and exile to Siberia of hundreds of rabbis and other religious Jews...
...Not a word of the Government's liquidation of Yiddish schools, newspapers, books, libraries, etc., and the sudden disappearance of all outstanding Yiddish writers, including David Bergelson, David Hoffstein, Arke Kushnirov, Peretz Markish and Itzek Feffer...
Vol. 37 • March 1954 • No. 11
