Night of the Murdered Poets

On August 12, 1952, thirteen Soviet Jews were executed in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, Russia as a result of charges of espionage based on forced, false confessions resulting from coercion and torture.^[1] This massacre is known as the Night of the Murdered Poets.

Joseph Stalin's apparent antisemitism was unleashed in September 1948 and June 1949 when the arrests were first made. All 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 ^[2] (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 Russia 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."^[3] JAC members would later realize that these were valid concerns.

At the onset of the Cold War, the newly created nation of Israel was allied with the West. With antisemitism already extant and well established 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.”^[4] 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.^[4]

Overemphasis on exchanges of relatively innocuous information between the JAC leadership and Jews in other countries, particularly American journalists, augmented accusations of espionage. ^[4] 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.^[5]

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. ^[6]

Defendants

• Peretz Markish^[7] (1895–1952) was born in Polnoe, Volhynia. In 1917 Markish’s first Yiddish poems were published. He helped found the School of Writers, a Yiddish literary school in Soviet Russia. His last work was March of Generations.
• David Hofstein (1889–1952) was born in Ukraine. In 1917 he wrote his first poem in Yiddish.
• Itzik Fefer (1900–1952) was born in Shpola (central Ukraine). After his arrest, his fellow prisoners found out he was an informer for the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This did not secure his freedom, however, as he was killed with the other defendants.
• Leib Kvitko (1890–1952) was born in the Ukrainian Shtetl. He was a Yiddish poet, and children’s writer.
• David Bergelson (1884–1952) was born in Ukraine, and was a 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 Yiddish State 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, U.S.A.
• Ilya Vatenberg (1887-1952) Translator/editor of eynikeyt, newspaper of the JAFC; 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 JAFC.
• Emilia Teumin (1905-1952), was born in Bern, Switzerland; deputy editor of the "Diplomatic Dictionary;" editor, International Division, SovInformBureau.
• 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), was 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.^[8]

The 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.”^[8] While some defendants admitted their guilt, others pled 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.^[8]

With extensive statements, arguments, and countless 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.”^[9] 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.^[9] 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.^[10] Even after sentencing the defendants, Cheptsov attempted to lengthen the process by declining to immediately execute the defendants.

The 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.”^[11] 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 Labor. 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 of 1955, when the case was reopened.^[10]

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 more important because of her research, thus she received a lesser sentence than the others. Officials counted her time spent in prison before the sentencing toward her labor camp term, so she went into exile immediately after the sentencing.^[12]

During his imprisonment, Solomon Bregman collapsed and was placed in the prison infirmary. He remained unconscious until his death on January 23, 1953.^[13]

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.^[10] 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.^[1]

Many of the surviving members of the JAC immigrated to Israel in the 1970s. A memorial for the JAC victims of Stalin was dedicated in Jerusalem in 1977 on the 25-year anniversary of the Night of the Murdered Poets.^[14]

See also

• Stalinism and antisemitism
• Solomon Mikhoels
• Nathan Englander, whose story "The Twenty-seventh Man" is an allusion to this event.
• Animal Farm

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Rubenstein, Joshua, “Introduction,” in Stalin’s Secret Pogrom, ed. Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir Naumov (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001) 504
2. ^ Redlich, Shimon. “Anti-Fascist Committee, Jewish.” Jewish Virtual Library. The American-Israeli Cooperatvie Enterprise, 2010. Web. 4 Feb. 2010. <[1]>
3. ^ Rubenstein, Joshua. “The Night of the Murdered Poets. ” The New Republic 25 Aug. 1997: Research Library, ProQuest. Web. 2 Feb. 2010.<[2]>.
4. ^ ^{a b c} Lustiger, Arno, Stalin and the Jews (New York: Enigma Books, 2003) 222.
5. ^ Rapoport, Louis, Stalin’s War Against the Jews. (New York: The Free Press, 1990) 122.
6. ^ Rubenstein, 2001 p. 51
7. ^ “Poetry of the Holocaust.” The Last Lullaby. Ed. and trans. Aaron Kramer. First Paperback ed. N.p.: Dora Teitelboim Foundation, Inc., 1998. 251. Google Books Search. Web. 4 Feb. 2010 <[3]>.
8. ^ ^{a b c} Rubenstein, 2001 p. 53-56
9. ^ ^{a b} Lustiger 2003, p. 236
10. ^ ^{a b c} Rubenstein, 2001 p. 59-62
11. ^ Rubenstein, 2001 p. 492
12. ^ Lustiger 2003, p. 243
13. ^ Lustiger 2003, p. 349
14. ^ Lustiger 2003, p. 246

External links

• 50 Years After The Night of the Murdered Poets By Shai Franklin
• 50th anniversary of the Night of the Murdered Poets National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ) August 12, 2002, Letter from President Bush, links
• Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (introduction) by Joshua Rubenstein
• Seven-fold Betrayal: The Murder of Soviet Yiddish by Joseph Sherman
• Unknown History, Unheroic Martyrs by Jonathan Tobin
• Shneiderman, S.L.. "Yiddish in the USSR". New York Times Book Review. http://www.lib.umd.edu/SLSES/donors/eng_articles/ussr.html.