At a memorial meeting held (1936) in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Mendele Mocher Sforim (Shalom Jacob Abramowitsch). On the platform (1. to r.): Nina Abramowitsch, daughter of the great Yiddish writer; V. V. Abramowitsch, professor of botany, grandson; Anya V. Abramowitsch,

Sovfoto

situation. The non-political, stateless existence of the dispersed group seemed to them abnormal, the result of a historic wrong which it was within the power of the new order to correct. The 1926 convention of the Jewish sections of the Communist Party went on record as favoring the establishment of an autonomous Jewish state within the Ukraine. While advocating the consolidation of the scattered members of the Jewish people into a nation of the normal territorial type, the Jewish Communists were at pains to disavow any nationalist intention. They were prompted, they argued, solely by the belief that the project would further the cause of the social revolution.

In the minds of some leading Communists, Jewish and non-Jewish, the project of settling the Jews on the land was associated with the more ambitious plan of restoring them to statehood. It was intended to plant the settlements on contiguous tracts of land in the hope that the area thus colonized would become a nucleus for an autonomous state. This was to straddle the Azov Sea, occupying both its Crimean and Caucasian littorals. The idea was dropped even before the flood of colonists to the Crimea began to recede, but the plan for a Jewish republic was not abandoned. In May, 1934, six years after the Birobidjan area in the Far East was set aside for Jewish colonization, the region was officially promoted to the status of a Jewish Autonomous District, only one step removed from a Republic, and given representation in the Soviet of Nationalities. The authorities were in earnest about turning this section of the Amur wilderness into a Jewish state. The third Five Year Plan provided for substantial capital investments in the region. In spite

of many efforts, the Jewish population of what was groomed to be the first Jewish state since the Dispersion failed to increase noticeably. According to the census of 1939, the total population of the Birobidjan district stood at 108,400, about one fourth of whom were Jews. There were 108 schools, four higher schools and one permanent Jewish theatre. In 1941, of the sixty-seven collective farms in the District, twentyseven were Jewish. Yiddish was the primary language. The autonomous Jewish state projected by the Communists served mainly the interests of Soviet Jewry, but admitted Jews also from other lands. The Jewish people as a whole did not figure in their reckonings. From the first, the Zionist party was outlawed as a reactionary organization and a tool of British imperialism. While the left-wing Poale Zion and the Hehalutz groups were tolerated for some years, the Palestinian homeland was frequently disparaged as a futile hope. 5. Cultural Activities. From the first the antireligious animus of the Soviet regime found a target in the Mosaic faith. The traditional practices of Judaism, no less than the observances of other religions, were held up to ridicule and obloquy in the propaganda sponsored by the Communist Party, while Jewish clerics were disfranchised (until 1936) and occasionally deported. A decree published on April 15, 1923, legalized "religious associations" and smaller "groups of believers," giving them the use of ritual objects and of houses of worship which had been nationalized, and bestowing upon them other rights.

In the early years of the Revolution, Orthodoxy showed a fair amount of vitality. Rabbinical conventions were held in 1922 and again in 1926. The budget

of the permanent rabbinical committee for 1927 to 1928 called for the expenditure of half a million rubles, part of which was supplied from foreign sources, on such items as the maintenance of Yeshivas, the repair of synagogues and Mikvehs, and the publication of prayer-books. On September 1, 1926, there were in the Ukraine 1,003 duly registered Jewish congregations with 137,000 members, and on October 1, 1925, there were 418 in the RSFSR. They would occasionally engage in forbidden activities: maintaining homes for the aged, credit societies for the poor, Heders for the children. The law confined their activities to purely religious matters, and as for religious schools (Heders were considered such), they are open only to persons over eighteen years old; boys and girls under that age may be taught a creed only in a home atmosphere by a parent or a tutor.

More recent information on religious activities is lacking. It may be assumed that institutional Judaism has been steadily losing ground. Yet the tenacity of the tradition must not be underestimated. In February, 1940, the Union of Militant Jewish Atheists issued a report in which it deplored the fact that the anti-religious movement had not made sufficient headway. In 1941 there were still 1,011 houses of prayer and 2,559 rabbis in the Soviet Union.

The drastic secularization of Jewish life, which was part of the Communist program, meant a ban on the Hebrew language and all it stood for. At first the prohibition was not rigidly enforced. Thus, until 1924 a company of Jewish actors (the Habimah) put on plays in Hebrew in the very shadow of the Kremlin. But as the years went by, the official attitude became more rigid. Practically all printing and importing of Hebrew books were discontinued. Yiddish is the medium of Soviet Jewish culture, as it is also the language in which the Jewish citizen may deal with the state. It is one of the four tongues in which the motto on the emblem of the White Russian Republic is inscribed. Yiddish was thus given official standing, and the Jewish Autonomous District became a center of Jewish culture.

The Communist fight against the synagogue and all its works meant also abolition of the Heders. They were replaced, in part, by state-supported secular schools in which Yiddish is the language of instruction. Every ethnic group in the Union has a network of state-supported schools in which the subjects are taught in the language of the group, although its members may send their children to other schools. This is intended as a safeguard of the integrity of the

Union's national minorities. In 1931 to 1932 the ele mentary Yiddish schools were attended by 160,000 children, about a half of the Jewish children of school age in the Ukraine, a little over a half of those in White Russia, but only a fraction (8% in 1932-33) of those in the RSFSR. The Jewish educational system includes also a number of secondary, trade, factory and agricultural schools, several normal schools and a great many classes for adults. A few universities have Jewish departments and the whole edifice is crowned by several research bodies, notably those functioning in connection with the Ukrainian and White Russian Academies of Sciences. The Jewish institutions of higher learning attract, however, only a small fraction of the Jewish student body. As a result of increasing inevitable absorption into the national fabric, registration has been falling off in the elementary and presumably in the other Yiddish schools.

The state also supported (as of January 1, 1939) ten Jewish national theatres and two dramatic schools, exclusive of many smaller local theatres. The performances, all in Yiddish, contributed a bright note to Jewish cultural life. The peculiar mentality and spirit of the group have found expression not in painting or music, where little that is distinctive seems to have been produced, but in the arts of the stage and in imaginative writing. Since its inception Yiddish literature has been one of and for the common people, the poor, the untutored. Venerated and studied as the very foundation of Soviet Jewish culture, it has naturally grown in scope and significance. Some of the prose and verse of the new era shares the quality of its Russian models, but there are also authentic works, rooted in Jewish experience and sensibility. The purges of 1937 to 1938 removed from the scene a number of Jewish authors accused of Troskyism and nationalism. It has been stated that in the early 1940's there were 150 active Yiddish authors, and this in spite of the dwindling of the Yiddish-reading public.

The courts, the schools, the theatre, creative writing, Communist propaganda, all made claims upon Yiddish printing presses. Most of these were located in Kiev, Minsk, and Moscow. The number of titles printed increased throughout the 1920's, reaching a total of 653 in 1932. Then it began to decline. In 1939, 372 titles were published, in addition to fiftythree in Tadzhik and forty-two in Tat. When the revolution broke out there was a large periodical and newspaper press in Yiddish, Russian and Hebrew. All the publications in the latter language (there were ten of them in 1917) were discontinued, and so were prac

tically all the Russian Jewish periodicals. Later several such publications sprang up, but they were of no great importance. The Yiddish press had the field practically to itself. In 1920 there were as many as ninety-five periodicals and newspapers in the vernacular. Their number, however, steadily diminished with the years. In 1932 it stood at twenty-nine; in 1939 there were six Yiddish magazines and sixteen newspapers as well as two in Tat and one in Tadzhik; in 1941 (exclusive of the newly annexed region) five newspapers and five magazines. The leading daily, Der Emes, originally the organ of the Central Bureau of the Jewish section of the Communist Party, later issued by the Council of Nationalities, had been discontinued the previous year. Only three newspapers of any importance remained: Der Shtern in Kiev, Oktiabr in Minsk, Der Birobidzhaner Shtern in Birobidjan.

Just before the second World War there was a fairly large professional group-perhaps 5,000 persons-functionally interested in Yiddish: authors, journalists, scholars, teachers, librarians, museum curators, actors, radio announcers. Yet the language seemed to be steadily yielding ground to Russian. Enjoying complete equality with the rest of the population, depleted by mixed marriages, the group has been undergoing a process of rapid assimilation. This development appears not to have been unwelcome to the Communists, for the Communist philosophy, while encouraging varied national cultural forms, looks toward a single socialist culture embracing all mankind.

6. The Second World War (1939 to 1942). The pact with Germany concluded just before the outbreak of the second World War did not alter the Soviet policy of racial equality. In the section of Poland annexed in September, 1939, the expropriated Jewish middle class faced a bleak prospect, in spite of the efforts of the new authorities to ease the transition to the Soviet economy, but other sectors of the population were benefited. Even among the Poles there were elements which collaborated with the new rulers. As for the Jewish youth, whose position under the Polish regime had been desperate, they greeted the Red Army with enthusiasm. Life under the hammer and sickle thus was one of security and hope. While no official attempts were made to intervene on behalf of the Jews beyond the demarcation line, the Soviet government encouraged the showing in Moscow, during 1939 and 1940, of the anti-Nazi film entitled Professor Mamlock. A large number of refugees from Nazi-held Poland were admitted to the country. Those who refused to become Soviet citizens and could not leave the Union

were deported to the northern provinces and to Siberia, where they underwent great hardships. Among the exiles were also some natives of Galicia and White Russia, including Jews.

In October, 1939, the district and city of Vilna, with its large and ancient Jewish community, swelled by refugees, was ceded by Moscow to Lithuania. Ten months later this republic with its quarter of a million Jews was incorporated into the Soviet Union. During the summer of 1940 the Soviet Union had recaptured also Latvia and Estonia, as well as Bessa rabia and northern Bucovina. The Baltic states legally voted themselves Soviet republics and were admitted to membership in the USSR, while Bessarabia had been historically part of the Soviet Union. The Sovietization of all these returned territories affected the economic status of the Jews to a greater extent than it did that of the rest of the population. Those who lost their occupations thereby were urged to emigrate to Birobidjan. Offices for the registration of prospective settlers were opened, but there are no figures as to the number of families that reached that destination. Everywhere the property of the Jewish communities was confiscated, Zionist and nationalist activities were suppressed, Hebrew schools closed and Hebrew publications discontinued, leaving the field free to Yiddish education and journalism. The Bund and other SocialDemocratic parties were banned and some of the leaders imprisoned. Zionists and the moderate socialists were subjected to criticism in the Yiddish press. Yeshiva students and teachers were permitted to emigrate, and so were refugees from Nazi-occupied Poland who had refused Soviet citizenship.

The newly acquired territories housed old, conservative, close-knit communities which lived a completely Jewish life, rooted in the Hebraic tradition. Now no longer separated from the Jewish centers in the Ukraine and White Russia, they were apt to exercise a retarding influence on the process of assimilation which was making rapid strides in Soviet Russia. Before, however, their influence could make itself felt, before, indeed, life in the Galician and Lithuanian ghettos had known the full impact of the new order, the invasion of the country by German troops (begun June 22, 1941) completely changed the situation.

At once the area where most of the Jewish centers were located was in the hands of the invader. The greater part of the Jewish civilian population was evacuated, and settled in the interior, first on a temporary, later on a permanent basis. Thus, the agricultural colonists were removed to the Volga and to Si

beria; a large number found homes in distant Uzbekistan, Central Asia. Tashkent, whither Jewish leaders, writers and publications were removed, became the Jewish center of learning. A black fate befell those who had been left behind. It is reported that many of them were exterminated by the invaders with the aid of native Fascists. A small number survived in Lithuania, Latvia and Bessarabia, none in Estonia. Most of the Jews of Riga were butchered before the end of 1941. About half of the 500,000 Jews in White Russia had been evacuated before the coming of the Germans. Of those who remained, nearly 200,000 are said to have been slaughtered. In the region of Minsk alone the number of those massacred reached 100,000. Very few Jews were left in Vitebsk, Grodno, Bialystok and Brest-Litovsk. At the very beginning of the invasion 52,000 Jews were butchered in Kiev and 25,000 in Odessa. In all, nearly a quarter of a million Jews are believed to have perished in the Ukraine, about

Yechezkiel Dobrushkin, Yiddish writer

50,000 in Kiev alone. None remained in Berdichev, Belotzerkov, Fastov and Vinnitza. In some centers the surviving members of the group were confined to ghettos. Everywhere the Nazis conducted an intensive anti-Semitic campaign among the natives, but without success. The Jewish citizenry distinguished itself on the home front and on the firing line, both as Red Army regulars and as members of guerrilla bands.

The large list of Jewish soldiers cited for valor on the battle front includes the following "Heroes of the Soviet Union":

General Jacob Kreizer, Submarine Captain Izrail Fisanovich, Cavalry General Lev Dovator (killed in action on the central front while in command of a Cossack cavalry division early in January, 1942), Private Laizer Papernik, General of Tank Troops Mikhail Rabinovich, General of Tank Troops Abraham Khasin, Private Leib Fainstein, Kogan, a guerilla fighter (killed in Volokolamsk), Private Neiderman, Lieutenant Levin of a Tank Battalion (killed holding off a German tank unit), Private Alia Shneier, and Military Surgeon (2nd Rank) Tsifrinovich.

Bearers of various Orders include Red Army Nurse Bukler, Colonel Faivel Mikhlin, Major Veprinsky, Sergeant Vekselman (killed defending Moscow) and Major Salman Osherov (killed in action).

Shortly after the outbreak of hostilities a Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was set up in Moscow, with a Yiddish organ of its own entitled Einikeit. It held two conferences of representatives of Soviet Jewry, and in other ways sought to further the war effort of the Jewish people. To the same end it attempted to establish contact with foreign Jews. In August, 1941, a group of prominent Jewish scholars, writers and artists addressed an appeal to "the Jews of the world" urging them to fight Hitlerism. A number of responsible bodies, including the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, responded to the call in a friendly fashion. Thus, after a lapse of nearly a quarter of a century, closer contact was established between the Jews of the world and their Soviet brethren. A sense of the common fate of all Jews throughout the world reasserted itself. In September, 1941, a Hebrew