On this date, August 12, 1952, 13 prominent
Jewish intellectuals were murdered in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union. This case
is also known as The Night of The Murdered Poets.
We, the comrades of Unit 1012: The VFFDP,
will remember them and encourage people not to forget events like that in
history, as we must learn from them. We will post information about that case
from Wikipedia and other links.
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Clockwise from top left: Peretz Markish, Itsik
Feffer, Leyb Kvitko, Dovid Hofshteyn and Dovid Bergelson [PHOTO SOURCE: http://jewishcurrents.org/august-12-the-night-of-the-murdered-poets-2476]
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The Night of the Murdered Poets
(Russian: Дело Еврейского антифашистского комитета, Delo Yevreyskogo
antifashistskogo komiteta "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee case"; Yiddish:
הרוגי מלכות פונעם ראטנפארבאנד Harugey malkuţ funem Rʼatnp̄ʼarbʼand, "Soviet Union
Martyrs") was an execution of thirteen Soviet Jews in the Lubyanka
Prison in Moscow,
Soviet
Union on August 12, 1952. The arrests were first made in September 1948 and
June 1949. All defendants were falsely accused of espionage and
treason as
well as many other crimes. After their arrests, they were tortured, beaten, and
isolated for three years before being formally charged. There were five Yiddish writers
among these defendants, all of whom were a part of the Jewish Anti-Fascist
Committee.
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
Main
article: Jewish
Anti-Fascist Committee
The threat
of an attack on Soviet Russia by Nazi Germany catalyzed the start of the
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
(JAC), a committee reaching out to Jews worldwide to support the Soviet war
effort against Nazi Germany. Solomon Mikhoels, a Yiddish actor and
director, headed the Committee. Other members of the committee were prominent
Yiddish literary figures, actors, and doctors who wanted to help influence
Jewish support for the Soviet Union through their writing and also using radio
broadcasts from Russia to different countries. In 1943, Mikhoels and the vice
chairman of the Anti-Fascist Committee, Itzik Fefer, traveled to the
U.S. and England to help raise money.
As Nazi
Germany secured its stronghold in Soviet Russia, Jewish culture and identity
was destroyed in the Holocaust. The last influence left in Russia were
the Yiddish figures in the JAC, and soon the initial purpose for the committee
was changed. The committee felt it had a duty to change priorities, and focus
on the rebuilding of Jewish communities, farms, culture and identity. Not
everyone agreed with the direction things were headed in and many thought the
JAC was "intervening in matters in which it should not interfere."
At the
onset of the Cold War, the newly created state of Israel was
allied with the West. With antisemitism
already extant in the Soviet Union, the rise of the Zionist
state exacerbated official antipathy to any outward show of Jewish activism. As
a result, official persecution was sanctioned, leading to the Soviet's
elimination of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in 1948 and the launching of a
campaign against Zionists and so-called "rootless cosmopolitans,"
the preferred euphemism for Jews.
Interrogation and indictment
The charges filed against the accused
included mentions of "counterrevolutionary crimes" and organized
action meant to "topple, undermine, or weaken the Soviet Union."
Additionally, the inculpation revealed that the investigation uncovered
evidence that the accused had used the JAC as a means for spying and promoting
anti-government sentiment. The indictment went on to assert that the accused
had been enemies of the government prior to their involvement with the JAC, and
that the JAC served as their international network for communicating
anti-Soviet views.
Overemphasis on exchanges of
relatively innocuous information between the JAC leadership and Jews in other
countries, particularly American journalists, augmented accusations of
espionage.
Another piece of evidence supporting the indictment was a letter that the
leadership of the JAC wrote as a formal request for Crimea to become the new
Jewish homeland.
All of the defendants endured
incessant interrogations which, for everyone except Itzik Fefer, were coupled
with beatings and torture. Eventually, these tactics led to forced, false
confessions. One defendant, Joseph Yuzefovich told the court at the trial,
"I was ready to confess that I was the pope's own nephew and that I was
acting on his direct personal orders" after a beating. Another defendant,
Boris Shimeliovich, said he had counted over two thousand blows to his buttocks
and heels, but he was the only member of the accused who refused to confess to
any crimes.
Defendants
- Peretz Markish (1895–1952), Yiddish poet, co-founder the School of Writers, a Yiddish literary school in Soviet Russia
- David Hofstein (1889–1952), Yiddish poet
- Itzik Feffer (1900–1952), Yiddish poet, informer for the Ministry of Internal Affairs
- Leib Kvitko (1890–1952), Yiddish poet and children's writer
- David Bergelson (1884–1952), distinguished novelist
- Solomon Lozovsky (1878–1952), Director of Soviet Information Bureau, Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs, vigorously denounced accusations against himself and others
- Boris Shimeliovich (1892–1952), Medical Director of the Botkin Clinical Hospital, Moscow
- Benjamin Zuskin (1899–1952), assistant to and successor of Solomon Mikhoels as director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater
- Joseph Yuzefovich (1890–1952), researcher at the Institute of History, Soviet Academy of Sciences, trade union leader
- Leon Talmy (1893–1952), translator, journalist, former member of the Communist Party USA
- Ilya Vatenberg (1887–1952), translator and editor of Eynikeyt, newspaper of the JAC; Labor Zionist leader in Austria and U.S. before returning to the USSR in 1933
- Chaika Vatenburg-Ostrovskaya (1901–1952), wife of Ilya Vatenburg, translator at JAC.
- Emilia Teumin (1905–1952), deputy editor of the Diplomatic Dictionary; editor, International Division, Soviet Information Bureau
- Solomon Bregman (1895–1953), Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs. Fell into a coma after denouncing the trial and died in prison five months after the executions.
- Lina Stern (or Shtern) (1875–1968), the first female academician in the USSR and is best known for her pioneering work on blood–brain barrier. She was the only survivor out of the fifteen defendants.
Some who were either directly or
indirectly connected to the JAC at the time were also arrested in the years
surrounding the trial. Although Solomon Mikhoels was not arrested, his death
was ordered by Stalin in 1948. Der Nister, another Yiddish writer, was arrested in
1949, and died in a labor camp in 1950. Literary critic Yitzhak Nusinov died in
prison and journalists Shmuel Persov and Miriam Zheleznova were shot – all in
1950.
Trial
The trial began on May 8, 1952 and
lasted until the sentencing on July 18. The structure of the trial was peculiar
due to the fact that there were no prosecutors or defense attorneys, simply
three military judges. This was in accordance with Soviet law at the time, but
is characterized by historians today as "nothing less than terror
masquerading as law." While some defendants admitted their guilt, others
plead partially guilty and some maintained their innocence. Since the trial was
not public, the defendants made expressive and often lengthy statements
professing their innocence. The defendants also had the opportunity to cross-examine
each other, furthering the trial's intense atmosphere. During the trial,
defendants answered some questions from judges which were wholly unrelated to
the trial and resulted merely from personal curiosities. For example, the
judges often asked the defendants about kosher meat and synagogue services.
With extensive statements, arguments,
and inconsistencies between the defendants, the trial lasted much longer than
the government had desired. On June 26, experts were called to give testimony
about the issues of treason, but they ultimately acknowledged that "their
judgment was incomplete and insufficient." It became clear that some
pieces of evidence had been tremendously exaggerated. For example, a statement
by Leon Talmy that a particular Russian village was "not as pretty"
as a certain Korean village was used as evidence of his nationalist tendencies.
Alexander Cheptsov, the lead judge of the trial, confronted with such a great
number of discrepancies and contradictions, twice made attempts to appeal to
the Soviet leadership to reopen the investigation, and was denied both times.
Even after sentencing the defendants, Cheptsov attempted to lengthen the
process by declining to immediately execute the defendants.
Sentence
The sentence stated that the
defendants would receive "the severest measure of punishment for the
crimes committed by them jointly: execution by firing squad, with all of their
property to be confiscated." The court also stripped the men of their
medals and made petitions to remove military commendations such as the Order of
Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. On August 12, 1952, thirteen
of the defendants (excluding Lina Stern and Solomon Bregman) were executed.
After the execution of the defendants, the trial and its results were kept
secret. There was not a single reference to the trial or the execution in
Soviet newspapers. Defendants' families were charged with "being relatives
of traitors to the motherland" and exiled in December of 1952. They did not
learn about the fates of their family members until November 1955, when the
case was reopened.
The defendant Lina Stern was sentenced
to three and a half years in a correctional labor camp and five years of exile,
but after Stalin's death she was able to return to her home and continue her
studies. During the trial, she was determined to be "no less guilty"
than the other defendants but was considered important to the state because of
her research; she therefore received a lesser sentence than the others.
Officials counted her time spent in prison before the sentencing towards her
labor camp term, so she went into exile immediately after the sentencing.
During his imprisonment, Solomon
Bregman collapsed and was placed in the prison infirmary. He remained unconscious
until his death on January 23, 1953.
Reactions and results
Stalin continued his oppression of
Jews with the Doctors' Plot, which began to gain publicity just as his health
began to deteriorate. Weeks after Stalin's death, on March 5, 1953, the new Soviet
leadership renounced the Doctors' Plot, which led to questions about the
similar situation with the JAC defendants. Upon the discovery that much of the
testimony from the trial was the result of torture and coercion, the
proceedings were reexamined. On November 22, 1955, the Military Collegium of
the Supreme Court of the USSR determined that there was "no substance to
the charges" against the defendants and closed the case.
Many of the surviving members of the
JAC emigrated to Israel in the 1970s. A memorial for the JAC victims was
dedicated in Jerusalem in 1977 on the 25th anniversary of the Night of the
Murdered Poets.
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Out of the Red Shadows : Anti-Semitism in
Stalin's Russia
By Gennadi V. Kostyrchenko
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