In the new book “Stalin’s Secret Pogrom; The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee,” historian and Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International Joshua Rubenstein, along with Russian historian Vladimir P. Naumov, recounts the 1952 trial of fifteen Soviet Jews associated with Stalin’s “Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.”
Of the fifteen, fourteen were executed including writers Solomon Michoels and Yitzhak Feffer.
The author views this event through the prism of Stalin’s anti-Semitism and paranoia and the anti-Semitism of an emerging Russian nationalism.
While this analysis may be technically true, it entirely misses the central point regarding the cause of what the author dramatically calls a Pogrom.
The Jewish Anti-Fascist committee, and like-minded committees were set up by the Soviets as propaganda organs after the June, 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany.
In the years leading up to the Nazi invasion the Soviets and Nazis were allies and, as a result of the Hitler/Stalin Pact of August 1939, had divided up Eastern Europe.
As devoted Communists, these 15 Soviet Jews were probably pro Nazi at that time.
The Communist world as a matter of party loyalty was pro-Nazi during this period, including American Communists who did their part by agitating against US involvement in the War.
A classic example of the pro-Nazi attitude of the American Communist left during the Hitler-Stalin Pact period was folksinger Pete Seeger’s anti war record “Songs for John Doe” released in 1941 where he calls President Roosevelt a warmongering fascist who worked for J.P.Morgan.
The Jewish Anti-Fascist committee agitated for support of the Soviet Union in its war against its erstwhile ally, Nazi Germany.
As part of this effort, committee members Michoels and Feffer spent six months in 1943 in the US where they spearheaded a large pro Soviet rally near New York City.
They specifically cultivated support from Jews who were already sufficiently mobilized on the side of the US in the war against the Nazi’s.
The vast majority of American Jews rejected Communist overtures and remained loyal Americans.
A small but vociferous minority of Jews, including certain high profile spies such as Julius Rosenberg and Harry Dexter White, would embrace communism and cast Jews in a pro Communist light amongst post war anti-Semites.
Contrary to anti-Semitic myth however, the majority of the American communist structure was made up of non-Jews.
After the War, the Jewish Anti Fascist committee got involved in documenting the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews on occupied Russian territory.
This ran contrary to official communist policy, which was to deny the Holocaust, an official Soviet policy that remained through the dictatorship of Michael Gorbachev in the late 1980’s.
In addition, the Soviet Jews of the committee were vocal supporters of the State of Israel, established in 1948, something that Stalin supported briefly as well.
Both of these positions would eventually make the Jews of the committee vulnerable to charges that they had become politically incorrect.
Political or social incorrectness is a capital offence by left-wing communist standards.
It is almost the equivalent of being a Jew in national socialist Nazi Germany.
One becomes an “enemy of the people” and as such, by socialist definitions, he becomes a “reactionary” to the revolution and is subject to banishment or execution.
This socialist definition of a capital crime is the exact opposite of the American definition, which is in accord with the Biblical definition.
In America, a capital crime, punishable by execution, is the crime of murder.
Anyone convicted of murder, regardless of political or racial background, is subject to the possibility of execution.
The members of the Jewish Anti Fascist committee were executed not for being Jewish, but for being politically incorrect, which by left-wing communist standards is the ultimate crime, punishable by execution if deemed sufficiently severe.
The committee members were high level, life long, witting, articulate participants in the international communist conspiracy to conquer the world.
They condoned, or at least didn’t oppose the execution and forced starvation of millions of Russian citizens who were deemed to be standing in the way of the “progressive” march toward a Soviet world.
If they discovered their Jewishness later in life, and there is no definitive evidence that they did, it was too little too late.
Execution of anyone, for any reason, is terrible to contemplate and arouses natural sympathy.
Certainly, from an American perspective, the execution of the fifteen members of the Jewish Anti Fascist committee was a gross injustice.
But from a left-wing communist perspective they had become politically incorrect, the ultimate socialist crime, and therefore execution was a viable remedy.
As the old adage goes, he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.
They are not to be compared to the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, who, rather than being Nazi’s, were killed for being Jews.
This was not a Pogrom or an inquisition against Jews, but a purging of Communists who became politically incorrect.
Chuck Morse Is the author of the upcoming book “Why I’m a Right Wing Extremist” www.chuckmorse.com
