THE J.A.C: JEWISH ANTI-FACIST COMMITTEE

            Let us not forget those Soviet Jews who were persecuted during Stalin’s rule. 

 

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)

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Mikhoels_Solomon_Mikhailovich]

The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC, Russian: Еврейский антифашистский комитет Yevreysky antifashistsky komitet, ЕАК) was initiated by the Jewish Bund leaders Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter. Upon their arrests the Committee was reformed on Joseph Stalin's order in Kuibyshev in April 1942 with the official support of the Soviet authorities. It was designed to influence international public opinion and organize political and material support for the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany, particularly from the West. In 1952, as part of the persecution of Jews in the latter part of Stalin's rule (for example, the "Doctors' plot"), most prominent members of the JAC were arrested on trumped-up spying charges, tortured, and executed by firing squad after a secret mock trial. They were officially rehabilitated in 1988.

  

A photo of a memorial marking the offices of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in Moscow. The inscription (in Russian) reads: "Memorial: From 1942 to 1948 the location of the offices of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. On 12 August 1952 Committee members were executed, victims of Stalinist terror."