Precision Software Appli…tions Silver Collection 1/Precision Software Applications Silver Collection Volume One (PSM) (1993).iso/games/egavga/soviet.arj/M2ANTFAC.DOC

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                        Jewish Antifascist Committee

     The Jewish Antifascist Committee (JAC) was formed in
Kuibyshev in April 1942.  Two Polish Jewish socialists, Henryk
Erlich and Viktor Alter (both of whom were later secretly
executed), may have proposed the idea to Lavrenti Beria, the head
of the NKVD.  The organization was meant to serve the interests
of Soviet foreign policy and the Soviet military through media
propaganda -- as well as through personal contacts with Jews
abroad, especially in Britain and the United States, designed to
influence public opinion and enlist foreign support for the
Soviet war effort.
     The chairman of the JAC was Solomon Mikhoels, a famous actor
and director of the Moscow Yiddish State Theater.  Shakne
Epshtein, a Yiddish journalist, was the secretary and editor of
the JAC's newspaper, Einikait (Unity).  Other prominent JAC
members were the poet Itsik Feffer, a former member of the Bund
(a Jewish socialist movement that existed from 1897 to 1921 and
supported the Mensheviks), the writer Il'ia Ehrenburg, General
Aaron Katz of the Stalin Military Academy, and Boris Shimelovich,
the chief surgeon of the Red Army, as well as some non-Jews from
the arts, sciences, and the military.
     A year after its establishment, the JAC was moved to Moscow
and became one of the most important centers of Jewish culture
and Yiddish literature until the German invasion.  The JAC
broadcast pro-Soviet propaganda to foreign audiences several
times a week, telling them of the absence of anti-Semitism and of
the great anti-Nazi efforts being made by the Soviet military.
     In 1948, Mikhoels was assassinated by secret agents of
Stalin, and, as part of a newly launched official anti-Semitic
campaign, the JAC was disbanded in November and most of its
members arrested.



            JEWISH ANTIFASCIST COMMITTEE IN THE USSR
 Moscow, ulitsa Kropotkina, 10, Telephone: G-6-71-00, G-6-47-07
            [letterhead also in Russian and Yiddish]


                         21 June 1946

TO COMRADE M. A. SUSLOV, DIRECTOR OF THE SECTION FOR FOREIGN
POLICY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

     Pursuant to the inquiry of Comrade Shumeiko, we are
providing some information about the Jewish Antifascist Committee
in the USSR and its activity.

     ...

     The Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR was formed soon
after the first antifascist radio broadcast political rally of
representatives of the Jewish people, which was held in Moscow in
August 1941.

     The Committee consists of 70 members (a list of Committee
members is attached), and its executive committee has 19 members
(a list of executive committee members is attached).

     The working staff of the Committee consists of:

     1)  Secretary of the Committee, whose duties (following the
death of Comrade Shakhno Epshtein) are carried out by the writer
I. Fefer, member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
[VKP(b)] since 1919.

     2)  Deputy Secretary of the Committee, Comrade S.M.
Shpigel'glias, VKP(b) member since 1919 and formerly a party
worker.

     3)  Senior editors: N. IA. Levin, VKP(b) member since 1944
and veteran of World War II; L. A. Gol'dberg, not a party member,
former director of the publishing house Der Emes; editor S.O.
Berman, VKP(b) member since 1940, veteran of World War II; and
three translators and several technical workers.








     In the course of the last two years, representatives of a
series of foreign Jewish antifascist organizations have visited
the Committee: Deputy Chairman of the Jewish Antifascist
Committee of Bulgaria, Mr. Zhak Vradzhali; one of the leaders of
the Union of Jews of Czechoslovakia, Mr. Rozenberg;
representatives of Jewish organizations of France, Poland, et al.

     Recently Mr. Ben Zion Goldberg (Waife), the son-in-law of
Sholem Aleichem, visited the Soviet Union.  He is a prominent
public figure in the United States, a member of the executive
committee of the Soviet-American Friendship Society (headed by
Lamont), chairman of the Committee of Jewish Scientists, Writers,
and Artists of the United States (Albert Einstein is president of
the Committee), vice-president of Ambidjan, the All-American
Society for Aid to Birobidzhan (president of Ambidzhan--
Steffenson).  Mr. Goldberg is also a major American journalist, a
contributor to the newspapers Toronto Star, Saint Louis Dispatch,
New York Post, and Today, and to the magazine New Republic.  Mr.
Goldberg stayed in the Soviet Union from January 11 to June 8,
excluding one month when he traveled to Finland, Sweden, and
Denmark.

     During his stay in the Soviet Union, Mr. Goldberg was
received in Moscow by M. I. Kalinin and S. A. Lozovskii; he
attended all meetings of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union;
and he had a series of meetings with Soviet writers (including a
banquet at the Union of Writers), with representatives of the
Soviet Jewish community (at the Jewish Antifascist Committee in
the USSR headquarters), with leaders of the State Jewish Theater,
with the chief rabbi of the Moscow Jewish congregation, Shliffer,
and with leaders of the Red Cross, among others.

     Mr. Goldberg visited Riga, Tallin, Leningrad, Minsk,
Vilnius, Kaunas, Kiev, Odessa, Lvov, Uzhgorod, Mukachevo, Brody,
and Stalingrad.  He was received by the leading workers and
writers in the capitals of the union republics.

     During his stay in the Soviet Union, Mr. Goldberg dispatched
via the Soviet Information Bureau 33 articles to the American,
Canadian, English, Palestinian, Polish, and Yiddish press.  The
articles were extremely friendly toward the Soviet Union.

     Before his departure, Mr. Goldberg began to write a book in
English entitled England, the Opponent of Peace, and a book in
Yiddish entitled Jewish Culture in the Soviet Union.

     Recently the Committee has received a series of requests
from prominent Jewish public figures from several countries
seeking assistance in visiting the Soviet Union.  Such requests
were received from:  N. Goldman, the chairman of the executive
committee of the World Jewish Congress; Dr. Stephen Wise,
chairman of the American Jewish Congress; Louis Levine, chairman
of the Jewish Union for Soviet Aid under Russian War Relief; Mr.
Raiskii, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Presse Nouvelle in
Paris; et al.

     The Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR has sent during
its entire existence one delegation, composed of Comrades
Mikhoels and Fefer, to the United States, England, Canada, and
Mexico.  This delegations's trip report has been published in the
book The Jewish People against Fascism (attached; see pp. 91-
129).


                                   [signed]

Chairman of the Jewish Anfifascist Committee in the USSR: S.
Mikhoels
Member of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Antifascist
Committee in the USSR: I. Fefer






.................................................................
TRANSLATOR'S COMMENTS: [Stamps at upper right:]   Removed from
the register; to the dossier of [blank] sector; date: 9 Jan.
1947.
[Secretariat OMI], Central Committee of the Communist Party
No. 2074    1 July 1946
[Handwritten marginalia at left margin of p. 1:]
To the archive
[illegible notations and signature]
The book stays. [signed] G. Shumeiko
25/1948