Trudy Gold
Soviet Jewry, The War and the Slansky Trials

Trudy Gold | Soviet Jewry, the War and the Slansky Trials | 06.01.21

- It’s very worrying what’s going on in the world. Very worrying.

• [Trudy] I know. It’s time for rationality to take over. We need another enlightenment, Wendy.

• Well, as you know, I had a really unfortunate incident the other night. I was like so shocked actually. And lucky I had my friend Andrea. Who like pounced in, and she just took them out and shagged them to bits in five seconds. I was sort of taken aback and shocked. I was just trying to collect myself, and I actually was going to give a really informed response and she just blew in and just like slapped them verbally for the anti-Semitism rather than facts, you know? How dare you? Anti Zionism, she said, I’ve never been a Zionist. I don’t think she really, she said, but I’m fast becoming one, and the amount of antisemitism is outrageous, and this is an excellent comment. And it was like astonishing for me to hear her actually respond like that, because there’s a lot of this going on here now.

• [Trudy] Yeah.

• And it’s a big problem within the Democratic party as well.

• I know, I know. We’ve been sleepwalking again.

• Leadership needs to call them out. It needs to come from leadership.

• Yeah, yeah. The leadership needs to be totally, yeah, you’re right. Totally informed.

• And very, very clear.

• [Trudy] Yeah.

• What’s tolerated and what’s not tolerated.

• [Trudy] Yeah.

• And then we have freedom of speech. It’s really, we really need to readdress this in a different way.

• Where’s the line between freedom of speech and incitement to hatred? That’s the key. And that every Jew now is seen as a spokesperson for the state of Israel.

• [Wendy] Absolutely.

• Impolite and impolite at supper parties, but much more dangerous on the streets. Okay.

• Before I hand over to you to discuss Soviet Jewry, the war, and the Slansky Trials, I’d like to say to our participants, first of all, happy Tuesday and welcome back, and thank you for joining us. And also that on Sunday, I’m hoping this Sunday to get a spokesperson to fill us in about what’s going on with the Israeli elections, how it’s all panning out. So over to you Trudy, thank you very much.

Images are displayed throughout the presentation.

• Thank you. Thank you Wendy. And thank you of course for all this information that the Lockdown University is providing. It’s absolutely essential at this time. And by looking at Soviet Jewry, the war, and hopefully I’ll get onto the Slansky Trials. If you remember when I was looking last week at the development of where that pernicious anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism came from, I laid it very much at the door of the Soviet Union. But I’m going to come up with something quite radical, as far as I’m concerned. I’d like to thank so many of you who send me articles, who send me incredible life stories, and I’ve had a lot of articles recently on the meaning of words.

Now you will all know, ‘cause I often quote it, Carl Popper who said the 20th century is just going to be about the meaning of words. A couple of articles I was reading, very, very incisive and clever. One of these articles said that antisemitism is far too an academic term. Why don’t we make it a bit more visceral? Because in the end, what is it about? It’s about Jew hatred, and I think this is some, so from now on, I’m going to use the term Jew hatred. So let’s go back to go forward. And what we need to do is to look at the situation of Jews in Russia, really from the revolution onwards. I’ve covered this in quite a lot of detail, so I’m, if you like, catching it up. And it’s important to say that the situation of Jews in the Soviet Union was different from Jews anywhere in Europe. Why? Because the communist revolution meant that from now on, in theory, everyone was going to be equal, all the divisions of people were going to disappear.

And it’s important also to remember that there was a disproportionate number of Jews in the communist parties, not just in Russia, but throughout the world. And I think I need to keep on reiterating this, because again, it’s one of those terrible Jew hating tropes that all Jews are capitalists, all Jews are communist. Jews are everything you don’t want to be. Now that means we are going to have to spend a little time looking at comrade Stalin. Can we see his face please, Judy? Later on, I think next week William will be giving a lecture, an overview on Stalin the man, I’m just concentrating on Stalin and his attitude towards the Jews, because that’s how William and I basically do it. He will look at general history, and I will go into Jewish history.

So there you have Stalin, and as I’m sure many of you know, he was brought up in a very religious background, he completely broke away. One of the most enigmatic, and yet in the end, evil figures of the 20th century. Now he’s complicated. How on earth do you get into the mind of someone like Stalin? Can we actually accuse him of Jew hatred or not? Well, the point is Stalin hated anybody who was his enemy. And of course one of his greatest enemies was Trotsky, Lev Davidovich Bronstein. Of the original eleven who took power in Russia, six were born Jews. And it’s interesting because there’s a wonderful quote from Simon Dubnow.

Simon Dubnow, one of the greatest historians of the Jewish world, who tragically was murdered when he was 81 years old. He was shot in 1941 in Kiev by the Nazis. And he said this, “Trotsky is more to blame than a thousand Denikins and Petliuras. Even before 1917, Zionist leaders warned Jews against sticking their noses into the revolution. For Trotsky’s throne of ministers of war, Russian Jewry will pay dearly.” Between 1917 and 1922, something like 20% of all delegates of the party congresses were Jewish. If you look at the Soviet secret police, 40% of the Cheka was Jewish. Jews were conspicuous as commissars, bureaucrats, tax officers.

So in a society where the world is changing dramatically, and don’t forget the number of wars fought at the end of the first World War, it’s the image of Jew. Now go back to that word. Those Jews believed that they were changing the world. There’s a wonderful quote about one of them, called Karl Radek. He was part of the negotiations at the Treaty of Riga. This was one of the conferences that was to stop these various civil wars within Eastern Europe. He said, “our country is seeking to liberate itself from the old tsarist empire, and in future we will liberate the whole world.” And the Polish delegate responded, “you are in love with a dream and not with a country.”

And this is one of the major accusations against these Jewish commissars that, in a way, they were internationalists. And it’s been argued by many intellectuals that, in fact, it’s only Jews, these inverted commas, “rootless cosmopolitans”, who can be internationalists, because this form of universalism hated any form of separatism. And of course, tragically later on Radek, along with so many of his colleagues, is going to be murdered. He’s going to be murdered in May, 1939. Now how did the Russians view the Jews? According to the Bolsheviks, they were not a nation. And during the conflict between, remember the international socialists, the Bund and the Zionists, they’re all socialists, actually.

Lenin said the idea of a Jewish nation is essentially false and reactionary. And Stalin, in 1913, at Lenin’s request, began studying nationalities in the empire. And he said, “to be a nationality, you should have certain characteristics. Those characteristics should be a common territory, a common language, a common economic system, and a common culture.” And this is what he said, “the demand of national autonomy for Russian Jews is something of a curiosity. How do you propose autonomy for people without a future and whose very exist existence still has to be proved?” Now it’s interesting because Russia now is going to house the third largest Jewish community in the world. And the question of what is a Jew is still one of the most complicated questions that people face.

Look, there are only 13, 14 million of us worldwide. Can we actually define ourselves? Just think about it. And I’m sure, I’ve mentioned this to you many times before. Sit round a table on a Shabbat or wherever you gather with your families and try and work out what that word means. For those of you who are religious, in many ways it’s simple. For the Israelis, it’s simple, it’s national. But what about those Jews who live in the diaspora, are quite happy with the diaspora, what does it mean to be a Jew? And it’s important to remember that really, since emancipation, this has been one of the most vexed questions, because it’s all very well for us to define ourselves. But how does the outside world define us?

Now, one of the issues of Stalin and antisemitism is that of course he went against many people who were Jewish, and can we see his allies and enemies, if you don’t mind, Judy? Now this is, you have Lev Kamenev, one of the most important of the Russian communist leaders. They’re all on the central committee. Let’s see the next one, Zinoviev. What an interesting face he has. Zinoviev and Kamenev. After Lenin had a terrible illness, he had a stroke and he dies in 1924, there was huge jockeying for power. Stalin teamed up with Zinoviev and Kamenev to oust, and let’s see his face one more time, Lev Davidovich Bronstein. There’s Kamenev, can we go on to Trotsky now? Yeah, there you have him. That’s much later on when he was in Mexico.

But of course it’s Trotsky who, for many, was Lenin’s successor. But he’s completely outmanoeuvred by Stalin. He’s outmanoeuvred. Stalin uses the other characters, and by 1929 he’s been expelled from the party and he’s out of Russia. A disproportionate number of the commissars, et cetera, were murdered in the purges, they were of Jewish birth. But the point was, as I’ve already illustrated, Russia itself had a disproportionate number of Jews in positions of power. Now, the revolution did not cure Jew hatred, and when Stalin has power, he actually gives his views on Jew hatred. And this is for an American Jewish news agency.

They asked, and I’m going to read now from the edition in Provda where it was reprinted. “National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic custom’s characteristic of a period of cannibalism. Antisemitism is an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. Antisemitism is advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by working people at capitalism. Antisemitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilably sworn enemies of antisemitism. In the USSR, it is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system, and in fact, under Soviet law, active anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism,” he goes on to say, “are liable to be death sentenced.”

So what you have with Stalin, how on earth do you get into the mind of a man who is reputedly responsible for the deaths of more people than Adolf Hitler? But, the point I’m making is that, in theory, the reason he goes, he had a blood hatred for Trotsky, and he did use anti-Jewish tropes against Trotsky. But the point is, they were killed as enemies of Stalin. Now what about the Jews living in the Soviet Union? Now obviously we’ve discussed this in the past, religion is dead in Russia. We are one people now. And you’ll remember that the rabbanim actually pronounced herem on many of the Jewish leadership. Now remember, Stalin had been commissar for nationalities. Zionism is outlawed because Zionism is considered to be retrograde nationalism.

Even though, of course the Zionists in Palestine, the majority of the second aliyah, who were very left wing, and some of them were kibbutzniks, communist kibbutzniks. So go back to that sort of triumvirate that has always fascinated me. The triumvirate of the coincidence of socialist views amongst alienated young Jews. You’re either going to be an internationalist, that was the smallest number, or you’re going to be a socialist Zionist, the second largest number, or you’re going to be a Bundist, by far the largest number. The Bund, of course, is outlawed in Russia because it’s seen as sectarian. We are one people now.

However, there’s nothing wrong with Yiddish. Hebrew is a real problem, because it’s the language of Zionism, but Yiddish can be encouraged. It can be the language of the Jews, it can be the language of Jewish theatre, it can be the language of Jewish cinema, it can be the language of Jewish literature. There is nothing wrong with it. And in fact, in 1928, Stalin did try the experiment of creating a Jewish autonomous area in Birobidzhan, and despite a huge campaign, the number of Jews who actually made it there, it’s right out on the Manchurian border, and it’s very harsh conditions. The number of Jews that made it there were never more than 30%. And it ground to a halt in the mid thirties because Stalin purged many of the leaders.

Now, as I said, Jews did suffer in proportion because there were far more of them in the politburo. So basically, when it comes to the purges, a large number of Jews did suffer. But if you gave up your Jewishness, what do I mean by that? You don’t go to the synagogues, they didn’t abolish the synagogues. If you want a career in Russia, and the whole ethos now was to become one people, and intermarriage becomes much higher. For example, in 1926, 21% intermarriage in Soviet Russia and 11% in Soviet Ukraine. By 1936 it’s up to 41% in Russia Federation, and 15.3% in Ukraine, and 12.6% in that part of Belarus that was controlled by the Soviets. And here you’re talking about the heartland of the very religious communities. And not only that, many of the Soviet leadership, who weren’t Jewish, were married to Jewish women.

For example, Lunacharsky, Kirov, Molotov, all married to Jewish women. Linguistic assimilation is interesting. By 1926, 25% of those of Jewish nationality, under Stalin’s terms, gave Russian as their mother tongue. By 1939, it’s 54%. And also what is fascinating, the Jews of the Soviet Union are very similar in the trades and professions they go into in the West, for example. They play a huge part in developing Soviet culture. They wrote most of the popular songs and were part of the mobilisation of the 35 year plan. And when classical music again became the repertoire, the great repertoire of the Soviet Union, the bulk of the performers were actually born Jewish.

Now let me give you a notion of a poem, this is by Eduard Bagritsky, this is how he talks about his break with his family. “They laugh, but what about their lice-eaten braids? The crooked, jutting out collarbones, their pimples, their herring smeared mouths, the curve of their horse like necks. My parents, both growing old in the twilight, hunch backed and gnarled like savage beasts, the rusty Jews keep shaking in my face their hairy fists. You outcast, pick up your miserable suitcase. You are cursed and scorned. Get out. I’m leaving my old bed behind. Shall I leave? I will. Good riddance.”

You see these Jews, in a way they’re taking in what I think is the Jew hating stereotype, but there are quite a few poems like this. And I suppose Robert Wistrich goes as far as to say that much of the Messianism of Bolshevism, because on one level, forget the pragmatic evil Stalin, but on one level it was an idea that there’s almost a kind of Messianism, and certainly they could be seen as Isaac Deutsche’s “Non-Jewish Jews.” I’ve recommended this book to you many times. It’s the first chapter that is brilliant. When he talks about people like this, like Trotsky, he goes back to the tradition of Spinoza, and he says, there is something of idealism within Judaism that is somehow transmitted, even if you give up your Jewishness, you give up your Judaism, yet there is this messianic dream to try and improve the world.

So in the Cheka, Jews made up 20% of all the investigators, and of the 12 who ran the counter espionage department, 10 of them were born Jewish. Now ironically, the prominence of Jews, you see, you cannot get rid of hatred in the way, Stalin can say everything he wants against it, but how do you get rid of hatred? And of course, if you think about the Soviet Empire, what have they taken over? The Tzarist Empire? Jew hatred was so ingrained in the population, it’s left over really from the old days of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Jews as Christ killers, the Jews as separate, the Jews as parasites. How on earth do you get rid of that kind of hatred? And Jewish prominence in all these aspects of society, because again, they are overrepresented in law, in medicine, in dentistry, it’s very much the similar professions to the west, and I’ve already mentioned the arts. It led to an upswing in Jew hatred.

In fact, Stalin, as I said, he called it cannibalism. And he wanted many books, over 52 books were produced to try and counter it. Now, it later on came to light that Lenin himself had a Jewish grandfather, a man called Israel Blank. Now it’s fascinating because Lenin is part of the fantasy of the great Soviet Union. Trotsky is written out of history by Stalin, but he decides that he has to keep it secret. Lenin’s widow, Krupskaya, wanted it known, but Stalin says no, we must keep it secret. And he did say it’s confirmation of the exceptional ability of the submitted tribe, and Krupskaya said it’s the extraordinary beneficial influence of its blood on the offspring of mixed marriage.

Now, and she asked twice that it be known, that people know that the great Lenin, the much loved Lenin, was, in fact, a quarter Jewish. Ironically, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pamyat, which is the association of Jew hating parties, there are over 370 different ones. They use this, the fact that Lenin had Jewish ancestry, those who hate communism, of course they’re involved in all this. Now the huge industrialization efforts, over 750,000 Jews were swept into it. Jews were also a very important element in the middle classes. And I’m looking now at surveys for you, 30% of workers swept up into the industrial process working for state wages, 30% of the Jews are that. 40% employees, and that means your lawyer, your doctor, et cetera. Everyone who works for the state. 60% were craftsmen, and it must be said, they were much better educated than their non-Jewish counterparts.

The Yevsektsiyas, the Jewish sections that had been responsible for breaking down Jewish life, they were under the control of Jewish commissars led by a man called Simeon Dimanstein, who, he was responsible for breaking down Jewish life. So having said that Hebrew was identified with Zionism, there is a huge flurry in Yiddish literature. Let me just read a poem from Alexander Vvedensky, famous Russian Jewish poet. “You know, I’m happy that I live my days recruited in the ranks of struggle and love, anger, pain, and laughter. Like my brothers of the commissar, I love all things dear to me. Deeds and men, days and years, the timid work, the livelier pace of fields and factories.”

But, and by 1939 though, only a third of Russian Jewry, and remember, it’s the third largest Jewry in the world after Poland and America, it’s Russia. Only a third of them now speak Yiddish. And the the other interesting development, of course, was that, in order to encourage more of the religious Jews away from religion, it’s the Yevsektsiyas, and for example, the writing of what is known as the “Red Haggadah,” and the translation of next year in Jerusalem, of course the Haggadah that we read at Pesach, is next year a world religion. And this is the Russian version of the “Red Haggadah.” “It would be, for us, quite enough. Even if they took something but only let us trade, we would get everything back, and this would be enough. Dayenu. With this unsuccessful trade, if only there was no taxation. Dayenu. We would like to do away with it, and for us it would be enough.”

And there were silly little things like, for example, young Jews were encouraged to eat bread on Seder. It was to sort of try and break down the religiosity of their parents. This is from a witness in Bogeress, on Kol Nidrei. And this is what he wrote. “On Yom Kippur, the Commissar organised demonstration with torches and posters saying, 'we don’t need priests and rabbis.’ The demonstration was held in the house of study of Rabbi Schneerson, which was full of praying people. For half an hour, speeches held forth, causing trembling amongst the praying people. In that evening posted notices in all the streets that a lot of restaurants will be open to serve the youth.” Okay, so that gives you, to put it all together, basically in those years, from 1917 to 1939, Russia witnesses the most appalling purges, it witnesses a regime of terror.

But it must be said a disproportionate number of Jews were involved in the revolution, were involved as high officials, and my contention is that Stalin only turned against them as enemies of his, not necessarily as Jews. Look, he was not adverse to making anti-Jewish comments. Of course he wasn’t. But tragically that was part of the culture he was brought up in. Lenin, of course, had taken the praise I looked at last week, the Socialism of fools. That’s how Lenin viewed anti-Semitism. But, something then of course happened. And what happened was that in 1939, Russia and Germany went in for that extraordinary pact in August, 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Who, in fact, was foreign minister just before that? A man called Maxim Litvinoff. Can we see his face, if you don’t mind, Judy? Can we go on to Litvinoff, if you don’t mind?

I’m going to tell you a little bit about him because he is, I think, one of the most fascinating characters. He looks a little bit like Goldfinger, doesn’t he? From the James Bond film. I must digress into a sense of humour. The reason the villain of the James Bond film is Goldfinger, Ernő Goldfinger, in fact, was a very interesting Austrian-Jewish architect. And he built a house next door to Ian Fleming in Hampstead that he absolutely hated, and his revenge was to name his Bond villain Goldfinger. But anyway, I always think that Litvinoff, in old age, looked a little bit like the Goldfinger character in the film.

So here you see Maxim Litvinov, his dates are 1876 to 1951. I’m going to read you his biography, ‘cause I find it fascinating. He was born Henoch Wallach. He was born into a wealthy Jewish family, Lithuanian family. They settled in Białystok, but remember where he’s born, remember what period. It is in the worst period in Russian history, as far as the Jews are concerned. It’s the reign of Alexander III and then Nicholas II, and he sees all the injustice around him, and he breaks away from any hope of, he’s not involved in the Jewish world, and he joins the Social Democratic Party, the illegal Communist party. And by 1900, he was a brilliant speaker, very clever man.

And by 1900, he is a member of the TF Party committee, goes to Kiev underground. You can imagine just how many secret service people there were. He was arrested in 1901. He was imprisoned, he managed to escape. He actually led the escape of 11 inmates. You know, prison in Tsarist Russia, on one level, and particularly those who were exile to Siberia. Siberia was known as the University of Crime because, what they studied there, as far as the Soviets, as far as the tsars were concerned, what they studied there was revolutionary theory.

Anyway, he made it to exile in Switzerland where he became the editor of a revolutionary paper, Iskra. He joins the Bolshevik faction in 1903. Many of you will know that in London there was a split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The Mensheviks, when they wanted gradual revolution, the Bolsheviks, which means the majority, wanted to go for it. 50% of the Bolsheviks were Jewish, 90% of the Mensheviks were Jewish. I think there were 44 people who met in a church hall in North London. Anyway, he joins the Bolsheviks, returns to Russia. Before that though, he met up with Lenin, who was staying in London. He was staying in King’s Cross, those of you who like geography attached to your history. And he met with him in the reading room in the British Museum also, which of course had been Marx’s great centre, and also in the British Library. And we know that they both went to Hyde Park Corner to listen to the debates.

Those of you who don’t live in London, Hyde Park Corner, Speaker’s Corner is where you have all sorts of intellectual debates, or rather, non-intellectual debates, where people with all sorts of theories, either good, bad, or indifferent, get on their soap boxes and talk. And because, as I said, we must lighten it, one Sunday I went with Professor Robert Wistrich to hear a debate, and of course you have the usual Jew hating speakers screaming about the evils of Zionism, et cetera, et cetera. And Robert decided to engage with one of these characters in debate, and of course, Robert was winning hands down. And all of a sudden the chap said to Robert, you are a professor, aren’t you? Where’d you come from? And Robert grabbed my hand and he said, run. And he screamed back “Jerusalem.” You see, sometimes you do have to lighten it a bit.

Anyway, in 1905, he became the editor of the Movement’s paper, New Life. In 1905, of course you had the failed revolution in Russia. And again, he spends the next 10 years in exile. This is the road of a revolutionary. He was based in Paris, where he becomes an arms dealer for the revolution. He had quite a lot of success smuggling arms into Russia. There were quite a few Jewish millionaires, you know, who were very left wing, who were providing money for people to buy arms for the revolution. And he would smuggle it in via Finland and via the Black Sea. 1907, the Fifth Congress of Russian Social Democrats. He gets involved with the Labour Party in London, and he shares a house in London for a while with Joseph Stalin. He’s arrested, and then he’s in Paris.

These are nomadic characters. They often were in Vienna, or Paris, or London, you know, before Queen Victoria died, it was set of Victorian England, anyone who had an axe to grind against their own government would actually be plotting in London. And certainly it happened right up until the first World War. Anyway, he goes to Paris, where he is arrested under the name Meir Wallach, when he was found to be carrying bank notes that had been stolen from a bank in Tiflis. It was Stalin who was organising bank robberies to finance the revolution. He was deported to France and he fled to Ireland where he joined his sister Rifka. And there he taught foreign languages at a Jewish school in Belfast. So this is an extraordinary career.

In 1910, he moved to London. He’s violently anti-war. 1914, when the war breaks up, of course all the communists were against the war. Just think of the first line of the “Communist Manifesto.” “Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.” And when he’s in London in 1916, he meets and marries the daughter of a university professor, a girl called Ivy Lowe, Jewish girl. And her family were real Anglo-Jewish intellectuals. Her father was a close friend of H.G. Wells. Her mother was a writer. She’s going to have two children by Litvinov, Misha and Tanya. And when her husband returned to Russia in 1918, she follows him two years later. After his death in 1951, she remained in Russia until 1972 when she returns to England, and those of you who know England, she spent the last five years of her life in Hove.

Anyway, once the revolution occurs, Litvinov is appointed as the Soviet government’s representative in Britain, January, 1918. You see, he has hopes of revolution in Britain, and he’s working with the Labour Party. And this is his address to the Labour Party conference. You know what Disraeli said? There will never be revolution in Britain because of the fogs, but that’s one of Disraeli’s throwaway lines. I mean, if you go back to 1848, when there were 54 revolutions in Europe, the most England could actually manage was a Chartis demonstration in Hyde Park. Now, whether that still holds is a completely different subject. But so this is how he addressed the Labour Party conference. “The land has been given to the peasants.”

He’s talking about Russia. “The factories are under the superposition of their shop stewards and committees. Superfluous apartments of the rich have been made available to provide shelter for the homeless. The banks have been nationalised, and in short, a nationalist policy has been carried out in all aspects of the community. The army has been democratised and self-determination has been guaranteed to all the nationalities in Russia. The Russian worker has been fighting an unequal battle against the imperialists of the world for democratic principles honestly applied. They have begun the proceedings for a general peace, but it’s obvious they cannot finish alone. I say to you, the representatives of British labour, speed up your peace.”

Now remember, once the war is over, the British commit troops to Russia to fight the revolution, and he is arrested in 1918 for addressing public meetings held in opposition to to Britain’s participation with the whites against the Bolsheviks. And a lot of members of the Labour Party, left wing members of the Labour Party, were violently against the British committing troops. And he returns to Moscow, actually, as part of a prisoner exchange. And he becomes deputy to the people’s commissar for foreign affairs. He was a passionate supporter of disarmament. He becomes commissar for foreign affairs in 1930. He tried to go for close ties with Britain and France. He was very frightened of the rise of fascism in Germany. And he tried to do a deal with the French and the British. It’s interesting, if the British and the French had done a deal with Stalin in '39, could Hitler have been stopped?

Anyway, the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, because what happens is, how can you have a Jewish commissar when you’re going to do a deal with the Nazis? And Litvinov, who later wrote his memoirs, he said, “I was the right person to sign a treaty with Hitler.” And you know, from the spring of '39, Stalin was hedging his bets, and he’s, the Nazis stopped talking about Judaized Russia. So from the spring of 1939, Jewish Bolshevism, Judaized Russia is stopped, and by the same sort of idea, the same thing is happening in Russia, and, in May '39, Stalin replaces Litvinov with Molotov and instructs him to purge the ministry of people of Jewish birth. And when Stalin ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland, its Molotov who declares that the Polish government has ceased to exist.

And of course, from Stalin’s point of view, the deal with Hitler meant that he could encroach a lot of countries in Eastern Europe, and later on he moves to Finland, Estonia, Lavia, Lithuania, parts of Romania. With the invasion of Eastern Poland, rabbis were arrested. They were accused of being agents of Ben-Gurion, of being agents of Chaim Weizmann, and please don’t forget that Begin himself had fled to Eastern Poland and was arrested and put in a gulag. There were many Jews who fled east to escape the Nazis, and I cross referenced that in my last talk, they were actually, ironically, saved. They’d had a terrible time in the Gulag, but they didn’t, they were sent, most of them, to Siberia, put in Gulags. And because, in the end, even though the Nazis invaded Russia, they never managed to really break through enough.

So it’s that extraordinary line of Heiner, isn’t it? “Didn’t anyone tell them that Russian winters are too cold?” Russia has only ever been conquered from the east, never from the west. And of course, with these annexations, the Soviets gained over a million Jews, and ironically, many of the Jews that they, of course, are now living under Soviet rule, are very much more conscious of their Jewishness. Look, 1917 to 1939, and they were very much educated. Many of them were Zionists. They’re educated in the ideals of the Second Aliyah. Now, the other point is that during the thirties, many German anti-fascists had also fled to Soviet Russia, and in a terrible incident, 570 of them rounded up and taken to the bridge at Brest-Litovsk and handed over to the Nazis, and of course, that included many Jews.

And of course, what happens in the successor states that are now under Soviet rule, Jewish life is suppressed. And then June the 13th, 1941, thousands of Jews were deported into deepest Russia. And you’ll remember that when I was talking yesterday about Jacob Gens, he managed to avoid that deportation. Now, ironically, they didn’t want to go, did they? They thought they were going to danger. Ironically, it also saved their lives. The men were sent to camps, the women went into exile. Of the 20,000 deported, over 7,000 of them were Jews.

Now, the Jewish reaction to the Nazi invasion, you see, ironically, the Russians knew what was going on. After the Nazi invasion of Russia in June, 1941, you’ve got to remember that the first evidence is actually when Molotov sends the details of the number of Jews that have been shot to the West. And this is by September, 1941, but it doesn’t appear in the Russian press. And in the war, there were half a million Jews in the Red Army, and many of them, over a hundred of them were generals. They had a very strong military position in Russia. 200,000 Jews died fighting for Russia. And of course, I’m not talking about those who were tragically murdered by the Nazis, but their Jewishness was suppressed. And of course, in the war, something else very interesting happened as far as the Jews are concerned.

After the Nazi invasion, when Moscow was in danger, Stalin realised that it would be useful, again you see, this is the other trope, international Jewish power. I can say this 'til I’m blue, green, and yellow in the face. Power. Jews are being murdered, where’s Jewish power? And yet Stalin still believed enough in Jewish power, as did Adolf Hitler, they even set up a bureau to find out where the seat of the protocols were. They decided, this was in New York, and this is where I come to New York, because America doesn’t enter the war, remember, until December, 1941 when the Japanese, of course, bomb Pearl Harbour, and then five days later, Germany declares war on America.

There’s those six months when Russia wants support, needs money, and what if we can utilise the Jews in America, in New York, to try and help us? After all, they have such influence, don’t they? Again, this trope of Jewish power, which tragically is a total miasma. So ironically, in 1941, he ordered the release of a man called Henryk Ehrlich and a man called Alter. They were Bundists, which of course was illegal in the Soviet Union. And why? Because he wanted to set up an anti-fascist committee.

However, he didn’t like them very much, so he brought in another couple. And the first one he brought in is Solomon Mikhoels. Can we see his face please? He was a wonderful man. He was director of the Moscow State Jewish Theatre. He becomes chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. And the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee begins to broadcast pro-Soviet propaganda to foreign audiences, assuring them that there’s no Jew hatred in the Soviet Union. And in 1943, in an unprecedented move, America’s in the war now, Mikhoels, and can we see the next face, please? Itzik Feffer. Can we see, yeah.

They are the first official representatives of the Soviet Union allowed, in the war, to visit the West. And they go on a seven month tour of America, Mexico, Canada, and Britain to drum up support for Russia. Russia needs money, they need ambulances, they need help. And in America, they were welcomed by a very important reception committee that was chaired by Albert Einstein and Goldberg, who was Sholem Aleichem’s son-in-law, and the American Joint was funding it, and it was the largest pro-Soviet rally ever held in America. This was July the 8th 1943. It was held at the Polo grounds. 50,000 people heard Mikhoels, Feffer, La Guardia, Sholem Asch, Stephen Wise, Weizmann, Charlie Chaplin, Marc Chagall, Paul Robeson, and Leon Feuchtwanger.

I’m going to repeat that, because many of you will be able to cross reference into this. So just imagine, it’s paid for by the extraordinary Joint that had been set up by Jacob Schiff. And of course it was the Joint that was doing everything it could to get money into Europe, although of course the Treasury Department doesn’t. The Treasury Department was very slow, and of course we’ve already dealt with that. So let’s go through those characters again, because they are going to come back into the presentations as we go on. Mikhoels and Feffer I’ve already mentioned. Mayor La Guardia, Sholem Asch, Stephen Wise, of course, Stephen Wise, who was really the leader of American Jewry, very controversial.

Chaim Weizmann, Charlie Chaplin, Marc Chagall, Paul Robeson. Paul Robeson was a great fighter for rights, and Leon Feuchtwanger, who of course had written “Jud Süß,” a very important writer. There was so much talent, and ironically, this is later going to play very dangerously when we come post-war. And of course we will be dealing with McCarthyism, because so many Jews, because of Adolf Hitler, were involved in left wing movements. And later on, when the Iron Curtain comes down, it’s really going to become a real problem, and we’re going to be running a few lectures on this later on in the course. $16 million were raised for the Russian War effort. $16 million were raised in America, $15 million were raised in Britain, and a million in Mexico. $750,000 was raised in Palestine.

When you think of the tribulations of the Jewish community, it’s just, you know, we will help with brave Russia. And it provided machinery, medical equipment, medicine, ambulances, clothes, and on July the 16th, Pravda, so it’s in the Russian press, they report that Mikhoels and Feffer received a message from Chicago that the Joint had financed a thousand ambulances for the Red Army. Now, towards the end, and immediately after the war, the Jewish anti-Fascist Committee, which had been set up by Stalin, Sergei Eisenstein was a member of it, by the way.

Those of you who love film, he is such a wonderful filmmaker, and of course he was responsible for such amazing films as “Alexander Nevsky,” which is one of the great propaganda films of all time. And those of you will know the scene in one of his other films, it’s of the steps in Odessa, which of course has been used by so many other filmmakers since. So what did JAC get involved in after the war? Remember there were a lot of poets, there were a lot of writers, and many of them had lost their families, and they began documenting the Shoah. This ran contrary to official policy.

The official policy was that the war was fought against all Soviets, and they didn’t want to acknowledge the specific genocide of the Jews. This is going to go on and on and on, and when, of course, Yevtushenko later wrote “Babi Yar” to commemorate an appalling massacre near Kiev, where 33,000 people were murdered, Khrushchev went absolutely crazy. And many of these characters had lost their families, including Vasily Grossman, who worked for the Red Army, and his mother had died in Berdychiv, in fact, we’re having, a colleague of mine is going to run a special session on Vasily Grossman next week. He’s a wonderful, wonderful writer.

Daf Hoshein lost his mother and younger brother at Babi Yar. So this is family. But the Soviet policy, and think about it from Stalin’s point of view. Once the war is over, think where Stalin was poised. He wanted to take as much territory as possible, which meant he had to absorb so many characters who had been very, they were fascists, Ukrainian fascists, Belarus Fascists, Polish fascists. How can we say that the Jews suffered more than any other people? And this is one of the problems that still echoes in our dealings with Eastern Europe to this day.

In Belarus, where I used to teach, and of course, Belarus is really in the news at the moment, and it is still a communist dictatorship. When we went to teach the Holocaust there, and we did through the extraordinary work of Jack Kagan, we did it through Ira, we always taught under the great patriotic war. You never officially spoke out specifically about the Shoah. And it’s important to remember this. And also some of the committee were vocal supporters of Israel, but their international connections, remember they’d been west, they’ve got international connections, it makes them vulnerable to charges of political incorrectness.

I mean, Vasily Grossman had been exempt from military service, but he’d been a war correspondent for the Red Army. And he had covered most of the major events, Stalingrad, Kursk, he had collected eyewitness accounts of the Shoah as early as 1943. His article, “The Hell of Treblinka” was actually disseminated at the Nuremberg Trials. And he participated in the assembly of the Black Book, which was to be published, it’s the list of all the deaths. It’s an extraordinary endeavour. And it was being worked at wherever there were Jewish survivors to tell the story. Remember that is our commandment. Remember, remember, remember.

Now, at first, the authorities ordered changes in the text to conceal the anti-Jewish atrocities of, and to downplay, particularly the role of the Ukrainians who worked for the Nazis, so many of them worked as the police, and the Lithuanians. It was finally published in New York, and in the end, it wasn’t published in Russia. And of course, please don’t forget what we’ve already discussed, Stalin was one of the supporters of the establishment of the state of Israel. Just to reiterate why, he believed that, at the very worst, he would have a neutral state in the Middle East, at the very best, he’d have an ally.

And you will remember that the Daily Worker ran an incredibly pro-Israeli article saying how brave they were fighting the reactionaries, because who was in control in the Arab world? Basically feudal monarchies, and also colonialism. And as the Cold War continued, we’ve got a double edged sword now, because the anti-fascist committee, of course, had been exposed to the West. So on one level, Stalin, at the beginning, is pushing a pro-Israel stance. Please don’t forget, and we covered this a couple of weeks ago, Gromyko made that extraordinary speech in the United Nations, where he basically said, look, the Jews are owed a state. Look what happened to them. Never forget this.

And in all the debates that are coming up about the validity of the state of Israel, and the UN and its resolutions, it was the United Nations that voted Israel into being. But there’s going to be a lot more of this as we work through Lockdown University. So on one level, Stalin is, he’s backing Israel, but he doesn’t want these internationalists. And in January '48, Mikhoels was killed in Minsk by the secret police in a staged car incident. And then things change, which I’ve already discussed. And how do they change? They change because of Golder’s visit to Moscow, where Stalin realises he’s still got a Jewish problem. And it leads to the trial of many of the great Jewish poets of Russia.

Peretz Markish, who was the poet and co-founder of the School of Yiddish Writers, Dovid Hofshteyn, a Yiddish poet, Itzik Feffer, was one of those who went, you can see his face on the screen. Leib Kvitko, who was the Yiddish poet and a children’s writer, Daniel Bergelson, a novelist, Solomon Lozovsky, who was director of Soviet Information Bureau, deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Boris Shimeliovich, chief Surgeon of the Red Army and medical director of a Moscow Hospital. They take the poets, they take the intellectuals, and they take leading Jews, and they put them on trial. And of course, what happens at the trial, it begins on May the 8th, 1952, there was no prosecution or defence council. It’s held in Crimea, and what happens is, of course, they were all sentenced.

The defendant’s families were charged with being relatives of traitors to the motherland. And tragically they didn’t know the fate of their families until the case was reopened in 1955. Three years later, after Stalin’s death, they said there was nothing to answer. But the point is, many of the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were murdered. And they were executed in Lubyanka Prison in an event called The Night of the Murdered Poets. It was a terrible, terrible story, and I will be going back to it, because I don’t want to rush, and because it’s important enough to really give justice to it.

And I also will want to do another session with you on the Slansky trials, because with The Night of the Murdered Poets, which is commemorated to this day in the state of Israel, and with the Slansky Trial, this is when you begin to use words like Zionism, rootless cosmopolitanism, and this is, the language that I were talking about last week, this is how it infects Soviet propaganda. And as you know, it’s then going to come out to the broad left. And by the sixties, and this is terribly important, Jew hatred is established through Israel as race.

The point is Israel is, in order to bring the third world online and the emerging states, the emerging Arab world, the emerging African world, language is changed. Zionism is not just a colonial movement of the white people to displace the native population, but Zionism is a form of racism. And this comes purely out of Soviet Russia. So again, think about Karl Popper and the meaning of words. So ironically, the major sponsor of Zionism, the Soviet Union, because it was the first step, America gave recognition, but Russia was the first country to give dejure and defacto recognition.

So ironically, Stalin believed it was in his interest to back Israel, the Jewish anti-fascist committee. They delivered, look what was brought into Russia, look at the kind of money and the support that Russia had in the West, but then it’s thrown away by Stalin, and all these wonderful, brave people lose their lives. And then it’s the Slansky trial in Czechoslovakia, where 13 people are arrested, much of the leadership of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia, including the deputy, Rudolph Slansky, and again, rootless cosmopolitanism, Zionism. But as I said, those two trials I’m going to deal with in a separate session.

So let’s have a look at questions. I don’t want to spend too much time, because we have a very important event at half past seven English time. And I’m going to use my wonderful pen. Let me use my wonderful pen to have a look at questions.

Q&A and Comments

This is Shamana Moorman, for everyone interested, there was a letter in a South African newspaper, negative signed by 350 Jews, “Not in my Name.”

Johnny Hill is saying, the state of Israel is a spokesperson for almost every Jew. Here you have a real debate, if I may say, Johnny, I mean, and I’m not talking now about the policies of the state of Israel, because we all have rights as individuals to love them or hate them. But what is happening is that the blurring of the terms, people attacked in Los Angeles, people attacked in London, and wherever these horrible incidents are occurring, are Jews, and quite often they’re visibly Jewish, which means they’re religious. And what on earth has this got to do with the state of Israel? This is the problem. Yeah, Wendy? What is happening with the American anti-Semitism lecture? I believe it’s going to be on at half past seven this evening.

• [Wendy] Yes, that’s right.

• [Trudy] And it’s a very important lecture. Is it not, Wendy?

• [Wendy] I think it is. I’m beginning to think that every lecture is important. We’re informing people, you know? And I’m seeing it more and more, all ages, people just don’t know the facts.

• You know, it’s fascinating. They talk about Jewish power, they talk about Jewish brain. I know that everyone who’s listening is intelligent. I know that every one of you has opinions about everything. But what has been fascinating, however well educated, and I’m not speaking for everyone, what’s coming up is that the one area that a lot people haven’t studied is their own area, which is Jewish history. I always believe that knowledge is strength. We’ve got to be able to combat, legitimately combat, the kind of arguments that we’re up against at the moment. If we want to live in the diaspora as free human beings, we’ve got a double fight on our hands.

Q: Why were the Jews so attracted to communism? A: Not because, these were Jews, let’s call them the non-Jewish Jews. They’d broken away from religiosity. They, in the main, lived in, they were the double outsiders. Look, if you got a business, or if you’ve got any kind of profession and you need someone to come in and tell you what you’re doing wrong, you bring in the outsider. The Jew was the outsider, and they were in a very good position to observe. Remember Rosa Luxembourg, her letter, “There’s no Room in my Heart for Jewish Suffering.” She said, “I must bleed for everyone.” Communism, prior to the revolution, the theory is beautiful. It takes, you know, Marx even said the need for law will wither away. But as many cynical people would say, the problem is human nature. Communism in theory, prior to the revolution when everything went so terribly wrong, I think a lot of idealist were attracted to it. Young Jewish idealists, the outsiders, they were international as well, and you see, that’s one of the issues. We are still international. And it’s one of the tropes, the Jew hating tropes.

People are asking, oh yes, this is from Robert Wistrich’s book, “Lethal Obsession,” I learned that Nazis were involved in developing propaganda about Nazism being fascism and part of the Jewish plan to take over the world. The worst thing that could happen was for the Jews to have their own state, which would help in their plans to take over the world. The Russians then built on this space. Yeah, any of you who really want to understand and have the stamina, it’s a huge book, “Lethal Obsession.” The great Yehuda Bower said it is by far the best book written on the subject of antisemitism, which I’m now calling Jew hatred. Yes, of course, the Nazis played with it.

Look, up until 1937, they believed that Zionism could solve their problem, but then when they realised it couldn’t, they worked with the Arabs, particularly people like Hajj Amin al-Husayni, and tragically, after Nasser came to power, Hajj Amin al-Husayni introduced him to many people who had worked for Goebbels, particularly a man called Leers, who became one of the main propagandists for Nasser’s Egypt. So it all comes full circle. What I’m saying to you, if you have this knowledge, it’s very, very important, because I think it helps you understand, because there are so many quarter truths and half truths being in the press, and so-called “learned people” giving their soundbite opinions. Now, please look, I’m not an apologist. I don’t talk politics. It’s not my field. I’m a historian. But what I would say to you is that, if you have more knowledge, I think you combat this appalling disease, you know, the virus that never goes away.

Q: And please don’t forget that there’s a great, why are Jews signing these petitions? A: There are Jews who dislike the policies of the state of Israel. That is totally legitimate. A lot of Israelis dislike the policies of the state of Israel. We’re not talking about that. But I do think that quite a lot of Jews have bought into the liberal left trope that Zionism is evil. You know, Zionism was merely a movement to create a Jewish homeland. Yes.

• [Wendy] Trudy, you’re right. A hundred percent. A lot, and certainly the youth, and that’s what I’m hearing over and over and over again here in the States.

• Yeah, and I think it’s dangerous, Wendy, because it leads to a horrific phenomenon, which many, whenever I use the term I get shouted at, but Jewish self-hatred. Look, if you don’t have any benefit from being Jewish, if you don’t have enough knowledge, and you hear all this hostility, it makes you turn against your own people. And I think that does, that’s where psychology comes into it all. And that doesn’t mean there isn’t legitimate criticism. Of course there is. Last week I looked at the IHRA definition with you. Why is it that people won’t take that on? It’s fascinating. But then of course you’ve got that extraordinary quote of Howard Jacobson’s where he says, they can’t forgive us the Holocaust.

• I’m sorry, may I just jump in? I just also want to add that yesterday I was listening to BBC News, and Netanyahu’s image flashed on, and we saw him making a speech, and behind him two buildings just imploding with rockets.

• Yes.

• Clearly that was the West Bank or it was Gaza. And of course, when images like that are equated, then, with Netanyahu, of course people are going to feel hate. With no fact. It’s just.

• It’s, it’s.

• It’s shocking and it’s very, very sad. And it’s very emotive, people are going to relate to that. Israel and annihilation.

• Yeah, yep. And the reality, I think, is a very different story.

There’s a, I have a correction, I do love this group. Erno Goldfinger was Hungarian, not Austrian. I knew him well. Thank you so much. Thank you for that.

And this is from Bonnie, rebellion against religious observance was not confined to communists. In 1883, the first graduating class of Hebrew Union College held a banquet in honour of its class, the Trafer Banquet had shellfish. It was a rebellion against Kashrut and was a catalyst for formation of the conservative movement. Yeah, very interesting, Bonnie. And we will be looking at the various subsections within Judaism, it won’t be me. I’ll be bringing in a colleague, an expert.

Oh, sorry. Speaker’s Corner is at Marvel Arch, not Hyde Park. You know, I can’t get away with anything with you group. Thank you, David. Yes, of course you’re right.

This is from Barbara. You said some millionaires gave money for arms for the revolution. My grandfather was a tanner who was wealthy. The Bolsheviks were after him until they eventually murdered him because he was a Jewish capitalist. You see, this is the problem. I’m talking about prior to the revolution. I mean Parvis, who was the chap who actually had Lenin et al. smuggled into Russia, he did a deal with, believe it or not, the German high command. He was a multimillionaire who raised fortune for the revolution.

Mitzi is talking about Hitler’s father was an illegitimate child. No one knows who Hitler’s grandfather was. They’re pretty sure, Mitzi, that it was the man who his grandmother later married, a man called Heidler. Believe me, the historians have been over this. His mother was a maid in a Jewish house, a man called Rosenfelder, And there was a son, a young son. I think he was 16, she was 40. But he was kind. But they’re pretty sure that it was Heidler. The name wasn’t even codified. Heidler, Heitler, Hitler. But the point was, Hitler might have believed he had “a taint of Jewish blood”, in inverted commas.

Oh, there’s a nice story from Rich Doris. There’s a story that when Hitler went to Paris to see the tomb of Napoleon, Napoleon’s voice came up and said, “you fool, did you not learn anything from my winter campaign?” It’s lovely.

Oh, this is an example of interesting use of words from Anna, in Yad Vashem’s database, the word is “evacuated,” not “deported,” for those Jews who were removed from the Nazi onslaught. Ah, that’s interesting.

This is from Myrna. My late partner and his brother left Poland to Russia when the Russian army left, as the Germans arrived, and was saved by following the Russian army in Russia for the duration of the war, and was survived by their mother, father, and brother. He was shot in the woods with the rest of the Jews in their village. Oh, what a history this is. I mean.

Bernice, there was a movie called “The Death of Stalin.” They wanted to save him, but there were no doctors available because all the Jewish doctors were sent to Siberia or killed. That’s not quite true, but I’ll tell you what is true. They were so scared. He’d had a stroke. They were so scared they didn’t attend him in time. The the film was a satire. Yes, it’s one of my daughter’s favourite films.

The name is Leon Furtwangler, I have read some of his writing. He was sorry, yes. Furtwanger and Furtwangler. Thank you, my pronunciation doesn’t get any better.

“Battleship Potemkin,” that was the film with the Odessa steps. Thank you Debbie.

Fiorello La Guardia, whose mother was Jewish, would campaign in Yiddish in Jewish circles and Italian in Italian circles when running for mayor of New York. I love that story. He was quite a character. Thanks, Trudy.

Q: Why would American Jews in the Joint in America want to help the Red Army? A: Because they were fighting the fascists. They were fighting the fascists, and nobody really knew what Stalin was up to, you know? You’ve got to remember that.

Furtwangler was an incredible writer, yes. His his nephew came to speak at LJCC a long time ago. An incredible man.

Q: Bev Price, how has antisemitism managed to stay clear of the medical model to be certified as a mental illness, and instead retain political validity, when Jews have such an impact in the field of psychology and psychiatry, and yet we don’t recontextualize it as a syndrome? A: That’s fascinating, Bev. Is Jew hatred a mental illness? It’s certainly some sort of psychosis. And you know the problem, Robert called it “the longest hatred.” And I still think that, and of course when you look at when there’s an upswing, it’s no accident there’s an upswing at the moment. There’s economic, social, and political instability. Add to that a pandemic, add to that an extraordinary movement of other groups who feel themselves to be oppressed. Jews can’t possibly be “oppressed,” in inverted commas, because they are white and they are colonial oppressors. But underneath it all, I believe, it’s actually the theological issue that makes it so potent. No other people have ever actually been accused of being the devil. And for centuries that’s exactly what the Jews were accused of. And remember, to be a devil, you have power. So this is where, and again, look, it is a psychosis. I agree with you. Jew hatred is a psychosis. So what are we going to do about it? How are we going to eradicate it? I have no objections if you hate me or dislike me for who I am. But if you dislike me because I’m a Jew, then I got a real problem with you.

• [Wendy] Trudy we can take, we’ve got time for one more question, Trudy, 'cause we have to finish shortly.

• Oh yes, this is from Jeanette. Peretz Markish was one of the Jewish poets murdered in 1952. His widow, Esther, wrote about these events in her book, “The Long Journey.” Thank you Jeanette. And can I mention that David Hermann will be on in the next couple of weeks, and he is an expert on writers, and he’s certainly going to be covering some of these characters. So thank you all very much. Wendy, thanks a million, and brilliant getting this chap tonight. So half past seven, we should all be listening again. So God bless and keep safe.

• [Wendy] Thank you. Thank you, Trudy. Thank you everyone who joined us. Bye-Bye.

• [Trudy] Bye.