Let us not forget
Solomon Mikhoels, a Soviet Jewish entertainer, who served as the chairman of
the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during the Second World War. He was murdered
because of Joseph Stalin’s anti-Semitic line.
We will not forget the victims.
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Solomon Mikhoels
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.kinoglaz.fr/u_fiche_person.php?lang=fr&num=5236]
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Solomon (Shloyme) Mikhoels (16 March [O.S. 4
March] 1890
– 13 January 1948) was a Soviet Jewish actor and the artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater. Mikhoels
served as the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during the Second
World War. However, as Joseph Stalin pursued an increasingly anti-Semitic line after the War, Mikhoels'
position as a leader of the Jewish community led to increasing persecution from
the Soviet state. In 1948, Mikhoels was murdered on the orders of Stalin and
his body was run over to create the impression of a traffic accident.
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Solomon Mikhailovich Mikhoels presiding over
a reading at the Moscow Yiddish Theater, ca. 1930s. Photograph by D.
Sholomovich, Press Photoagency. (YIVO)
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House in Daugavpils where on 16 March 1890
Solomon Mikhoels, a Soviet Jewish actor and director, was born. Former
Postoyalaya, now Mihoelsa Street. Nowadays the building hosts the Daugavpils
Disabled Children’s Preschool Educational Establishment.
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Biography
Born Shloyme Vovsi in Dvinsk
(now Daugavpils, Latvia), Mikhoels studied law in Saint Petersburg, but left
school in 1918 to join Alexis Granowsky's Jewish Theater Workshop, which was
attempting to create a national Jewish theater in Russia based on the Yiddish
language. Two years later, in 1920, the workshop moved to Moscow, where it
established the Moscow State Jewish Theater. This was in keeping with Vladimir
Lenin's policy on nationalities, which encouraged them to pursue and develop
their own cultures under the aegis of the Soviet state.
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Solomon Mikhoels (center) and other actors in
Yidishe glikn (Jewish Luck), directed by Aleksandr Granovskii, USSR,
1925. (YIVO)
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Zrelishscha (Entertainment), no.
89 (June 1924). The cover of this Moscow journal features a montage by I.
Makhlis celebrating the GOSET (Moscow State Yiddish Theater), with Aleksandr
Granovskii as the locomotive that pulls the train and actor Solomon Mikhoels as
the conductor atop the engine. (YIVO)
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Jewish cultural figures who would become
members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee signing an appeal to world Jewry
to support the Soviet war effort against Nazi Germany, Moscow, 1941. (Front
row, left to right) Dovid Bergelson, Solomon Mikhoels, and Ilya Ehrenburg; (second
row) David Oistrakh, Yitskhok Nusinov, Yakov Zak, Boris Iofan, Benjamin Zuskin,
Aleksandr Tyshler, Shmuel Halkin. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
courtesy of Martin Smith)
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Theatrical career
Mikhoels, who showed outstanding
talent, was the company's leading actor and, as of 1928, its director. He
played in several memorable roles, including Tevye in an adaptation of Sholom
Aleichem's comic short stories about Tevye the Milkman
(which were adapted for an American audience as Fiddler on the Roof) as well as in many
original works, such as Bar Kochba, and translations. Perhaps his most noted
role was as King
Lear in a Yiddish translation of the play by William Shakespeare. These plays were
ostensibly supportive of the Soviet state; however, historian Jeffrey
Veidlinger has argued that closer readings suggest they actually contained
veiled critiques of Stalin's regime and assertions of Jewish national identity.
It is now believed that the Ukrainian director Les Kurbas
contributed to the original King Lear production after he was ousted from his
Berezil theater in 1934. He seems to have had a lasting influence on Mikhoel's
directing style.
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Mikhoels
traveling chess (1940s, USA) State Central Museum of Contemporary History of
Russia
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Anti-fascist activities and
assassination
By the mid-1930s, Mikhoels' career was
threatened because of his association with other leading intelligentsia,
who were victims of Stalin's purges. Mikhoels actively supported Stalin against Adolf
Hitler, and in 1942, he was made chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist
Committee. In this capacity, he travelled around the world, meeting with Jewish
communities to encourage them to support the Soviet Union in its war against Nazi
Germany.
While this was useful to Stalin during
World
War II, after the war, Stalin opposed contacts between Soviet Jews and
Jewish communities in non-Communist countries, which he deemed as "bourgeoisie".
The Jewish State Theater was closed and the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist
Committee were arrested – all except for two were eventually executed in the
purges shortly before Stalin's death.
Mikhoels was the most visible of the
intellectual Jewish leadership, and a show trial would have cast aspersions on
Stalin's rule. Thus in January 1948, he was assassinated on Stalin's personal
orders in Minsk.
His death was disguised as a hit-and-run car accident. Mikhoels was taken to an
MGB dacha and killed,
along with his non-Jewish colleague Golubov-Potapov, under supervision of
Stalin's Deputy Minister of State Security Sergei
Ogoltsov. Their bodies were then dumped on a road-side in Minsk and run
over by a truck. Mikhoels received a state funeral and was buried at the New Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow.
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Bust of Solomon Mikhoels
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Family
Mikhoels was married to Anastasia
Pototskaya, a Russian of Polish descent. He had two daughters from his first
marriage to Sara Kantor, Nina and Natalya Vovsi.
Mikhoels' cousin Miron Vovsi was
Stalin's personal physician. He was arrested during the Doctors' plot affair
but released after Stalin's death in 1953, as was Mikhoels' son-in-law, the
Polish-born composer Mieczysław Weinberg. In 1983, Mikhoel's daughter, Natalia
Vovsi-Mikoels, wrote a biography of her father: My Father Shlomo Mikhoels:
The Life and Death of a Jewish Actor.
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Memorial tablet on the house in Daugavpils
where 16 March 1890 was born Solomon Mikhoels, a Soviet Jewish actor and
director. Former Postojalaja, now
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Commemoration
A large international
cultural center in Moscow is named after him.
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