Where the Jews Aren't
Page 16
In 1990, Shkolnik traveled to Israel with a small Soviet parliamentary delegation; diplomatic relations between the two countries had not been restored yet. “I was shocked,” he told me. “I loved everything, including the fact that the signs are in Hebrew and there are orange trees growing along the sides of the road, and when I returned to Birobidzhan, I wrote about this. The chief architect of the city immediately wrote a letter saying I was lying and that in fact there was barbed wire along the roads here.”
Shkolnik became obsessed, and he finally used a contact in the Israeli intelligence services to have himself smuggled to Israel. A couple of months later, as the Soviet Union wound down and collapsed, emigration became a simple matter of buying a ticket. Thus the last of the Yiddish-language poets of Birobidzhan, the last of the many men who had promised to make it a Yiddish-reading autonomy, also became the last Russian Jew to have expended extraordinary effort in order to emigrate to Israel.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* * *
For a little book, this one took a long time and a lot of human effort. I am indebted to Jonathan Rosen, then of Nextbook, who assigned this book back in ancient times. At Knopf, editor Dan Frank rescued the book, an earlier version of which was languishing. My agent, Elyse Cheney, prodded me to listen to Dan, which was one of the best things I’ve done: his guidance and his patience made it finally turn into a book. I am grateful to everyone who has talked with me about Jewish diaspora identity, emigration, and nationalisms—especially to Svetlana Boym, whose voice I miss every day. And as always, nothing I do is possible without Darya Oreshkina, who also, as is her way, created the maps and infographics for this book.
NOTES
* * *
Chapter 1
1. Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 1–10.
2. Joseph Sherman, “David Bergelson (1884–1952): A Biography,” in David Bergelson: From Modernism to Socialist Realism, edited by Joseph Sherman and Gennady Estraikh (London: Legenda, 2007), 7.
3. Sherman, 7.
4. Sherman, 8–10.
5. There are many ways to transcribe these writers’ names, and they themselves changed transcriptions as they moved from language to language. I have opted for the transcriptions used by YIVO.
Chapter 2
1. Simon Dubnow, “The Doctrine of Jewish Nationalism,” in Simon Dubnow, Nationalism and History: Essays on Old and New Judaism, ed. Koppel S. Pinson (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1958).
2. Dubnow, 77.
3. Dubnow, 97.
4. Simon Dubnow, “Autonomism, the Basis of the National Program,” in Dubnow, Nationalism and History, 131–142.
5. Simon Dubnow, “Reality and Fantasy in Zionism,” in Dubnow, Nationalism and History, 155–166.
6. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011), 2.
7. Sofia Dubnova-Erlich, Zhizn i tvorchestvo S. M. Dubnova (publication information unknown; obtained online), 118.
8. Simon Dubnow, “A Historic Moment (The Question of Emigration),” in Simon Dubnow, Nationalism and History, 192–99.
9. Dubnova-Erlich, 211.
10. Dubnova-Erlich. 234.
11. Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2015), 61.
12. Dubnova-Erlich. 238.
13. Dubnova-Erlich, 256–57.
14. Dubnova-Erlich, 258.
15. Dubnova-Erlich, 266.
16. Dubnova-Erlich, 267.
17. Dubnova-Erlich, 271.
18. Simon Dubnow, “The Emancipation Movement and the Emigration Movement,” in Dubnow, Nationalism and History, 233–52.
Chapter 3
1. Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir P. Naumov, Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, abridged edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 127.
2. Lev Bergelson, “Memories of My Father: The Early Years (1918–1934),” in David Bergelson, ed. Joseph Sherman and Gennady Estraikh (London: Legenda, 2007), 79.
3. Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 65–70.
4. Lev Bergelson, 79.
5. “The Founding Tasks of the Kultur-Lige,” in Simon Rabinovitch, ed., Jews and Diaspora Nationalism: Writings on Jewish Peoplehood in Europe and the United States (Waltham, MA: Brandeis, 2012), 143.
6. David E. Fishman, The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 83.
7. Sherman, 24.
8. Lev Bergelson, 80.
9. Gitelman, 76–77.
10. Lev Bergelson, 80.
11. Sherman, 25.
12. Sherman, 25.
13. Lev Bergelson, 81.
14. Simon Dubnow, Kniga zhizni. Materialy dlya istorii moyego vremeni (Jerusalem, Moscow: Hesharim/Mosty Kultury; 2004), 526.
15. Sherman, 26.
16. Sherman, 25.
17. Dubnow, Kniga zhizni, 526–33.
18. Gennadi Estraikh, In Harness: Yiddish Writers’ Romance with Communism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005), 68.
19. Sherman, 26.
20. Lev Bergelson, 85.
21. Ellen Kellman, “Bergelson at Forverts,” in David Bergelson: From Modernism to Socialist Realism, ed. Joseph Sherman and Gennady Estraikh (London: Legenda, 2007), 198.
22. Sherman, 35.
23. Dubnow, Kniga zhizni, 532.
24. Dubnow, Kniga zhizni, 539.
25. Gennady Estraikh, “David Bergelson in and on America (1929–1949),” in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 205.
26. Dubnow, Kniga zhizni, 533.
27. Kellman, 190.
28. Kellman, 191.
29. Quoted in Sherman, 36.
Chapter 4
1. Sherman, 38.
2. Kellman, 192.
3. Kellman, 194.
4. Kellman, 192.
5. Estraikh, 78–79.
6. Kellman, 192.
7. Kellman, 200.
Chapter 5
1. Sherman, 41.
2. Sherman, 42.
3. Gennady Estraikh in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 210–11.
4. Estraikh, in David Bergelson, 212.
5. Estraikh, in David Bergelson, 214.
6. Anita Shapira, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1948 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 173–74.
7. Tareq Y. Ismael, The Communist Movement in the Arab World (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), 61.
8. Estraikh, in David Bergelson, 212–13.
9. Lev Bergelson, 88.
10. Estraikh, in David Bergelson, 206.
11. Sherman, 50.
Chapter 6
1. Quoted in Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 44.
2. Quoted in O. P. Zhuravleva, Istoriya knizhnogo dela v yevreskoy aftonomnoy oblasti (konets 1920-kh—nachalo 1960-kh godov) (Khabarovsk: Dalnevostochnaya Gosudarstvennaya Biblioteka, 2008), 37.
3. Quoted in Zhuravleva, 38.
4. B. L. Bruk, Predvaritelniy svodniy otchet expeditsii KOMZETa v 1927 godu, ed. V. R. Viliams (Moscow: n.p., 1928).
5. Documents from the permanent exhibit of the Birobidzhan Regional Museum, viewed October 4–8, 2009.
6. “Birobidzhan glazami amerikanskogo zhurnalista Davida Brauna,” documents from the State Archives of Birobidzhan reproduced by Freud, the Birobidzhan Jewish community center, 10.
7. Boris Kotlerman, “The Construction of the Jewish Space: Immigrant Settlements in Birobidzhan,” in Ber Boris Kotlerman and Shmuel Yavin, Bauhaus in Birobidzhan: 80 Years of Jewish Settlement in the Far East of the USSR (Tel Aviv: Bauhaus Center, 2008), 128.
8. Iosif Brener, Lehaim, Birobidzhan! (
Krasnoyarsk: Krasnoyarsky Pisatel, 2007), 25–28.
9. “Vospominaniya pervyh pereselentsev,” documents from the State Archives of Birobidzhan reproduced by Freud, the Birobidzhan Jewish community center, recollections of Leyba Refoels Shkolnik, 11–12.
10. “Vospominaniya,” 13.
Chapter 7
1. Boris Kotlerman, “ ‘Why I Am in Favour of Birobidzhan’: Bergelson’s Fateful Decision (1932),” in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 223–24.
2. Sherman, 51.
3. Estraikh in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 215.
4. Rubenstein and Naumov, 131.
5. Sherman, 51.
Chapter 8
1. Rubenstein and Naumov, 131–32.
2. Kotlerman and Yavin, 140–42.
3. Brown’s dispatch, published January 6, 1933, reverse-translated from Russian according to “Birobidzhan glazami,” 14.
4. “Birobidzhan glazami,” 10.
5. David A. Brown, “Final Conclusions on the Matter of the Soviet Dream of the Construction of Birobidzhan,” American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune, January 20, 1933, reverse translation according to “Birobidzhan glazami,” 23–24.
6. David Bergelson, “Birobidzhanskiye motivy,” in David Bergelson, Izbranniye proizvedeniya (Moscow: OGIZ, Der Emes, 1947), 329–30. The story was originally written in Yiddish and later translated into Russian by Bergelson. I translated this excerpt from the Russian version.
7. Zhuravleva, 47.
8. Zhuravleva, 111.
9. B. Miller, “Nachalo,” in Vospominaniya o Em. Kazakeviche, ed. G. O. Kazakevich and B. S. Ruben (Moscow: Sovetsky Pisatel, 1984), 54.
10. G. G. Kazakevich, “Nemnogo o nashey semye,” in Kazakevich and Ruben, eds., Vospominaniya, 21.
11. Yakov Chernis, “V tayezhnom krayu,” in Kazakevich and Ruben, eds., Vospominaniya, 59–60.
12. Lyubov Vasserman, “Dve vstrechi,” in Kazakevich and Ruben, eds., Vospominaniya, 56–57.
13. The incident is described by Vasserman in Kazakevich and Ruben, eds., Vospominaniya, 57–58.
14. Quoted in Kotlerman in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 225.
15. Rubenstein and Naumov, 131.
16. Podstrochnik, Zhizn’ Lilianny Lunginoy, rasskazannaya yeyu v fil’me Olega Dormana (Moscow: Corpus, 2009), 65–66.
Chapter 9
1. Sherman in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 52.
2. Kotlerman in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 229–30.
3. Kotlerman in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 230.
4. Zhuravleva, 75.
5. Nora Levin, Paradox of Survival: The Jews in the Soviet Union Since 1917, vol. 1 (New York: New York University Press, 1990), 302.
6. Kotlerman and Yavin, 124.
7. Kotlerman and Yavin, 141.
8. “1936 Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” http://www.hrono.ru/dokum/193_dok/cnst1936.html#7; accessed November 14, 2009.
9. Kotlerman and Yavin, 141.
10. Quoted in Levin, 303.
11. Birobidzhan Regional Museum, permanent exhibition.
12. T. Gen, “Yego lubili,” in Kazakevich and Ruben, eds., Vospominaniya, 43.
13. Quoted in Levin, 307.
14. Birobidzhan Regional Museum.
15. Levin, 307.
16. Levin, 307.
17. Zhuravleva, 80.
18. Levin, 308.
19. Zhuravleva, 80.
20. Zhuravleva, 345.
21. Quoted in Levin, 308.
22. Sherman, 56.
23. Levin, 327.
24. Kotlerman in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 228–30.
25. Interview with Leonid Shkolnik, Jerusalem, November 2009.
26. Birobidzhan Regional Museum.
27. A telegram confirming the arrest and the placement of children in state custody is on display as part of the permanent exhibit at the Birobidzhan Regional Museum.
28. Robert Weinberg, Stalin’s Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland; An Illustrated History, 1928–1996 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 67.
29. Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 274–97.
30. Stepan Laletin, Birobidzhan Museum exhibit.
31. Yuri Kosvintsev, Birobidzhan Museum exhibit.
32. Fedor Vayser, Birobidzhan Museum.
33. Lazar Bimets, Birobidzhan Museum.
34. Nikolay Blagoy, Birobidzhan Museum.
35. Valdheym Museum, permanent exhibit.
36. Weinberg, 67.
37. Birobidzhan Regional Museum.
38. Kotlerman in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 230.
39. Kotlerman and Yavin, 143.
40. Zhuravleva, 56–67.
41. Birobidzhan Regional Museum.
42. Zhuravleva, 106–08.
43. Kotlerman in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 231
Chapter 10
1. Text of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1939pact.html; accessed August 24, 2015.
2. Kotlerman and Yavin, 140.
3. Memoir by actor David Lederman quoted in Rubenstein and Naumov, 6–7.
4. Interview with David Markish, son of Perets Markish, at http://www.languages-study.com/yiddish/markishsons.html; accessed December 2, 2009.
5. Dubnova-Erlich, 277.
6. The Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum, permanent exhibition.
7. Koppel S. Pinson, introduction to Dubnow, Nationalism and History.
8. Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, permanent exhibit.
9. Dubnova-Erlich, 278.
Chapter 11
1. Rubenstein and Naumov, 7–8.
2. Shimon Redlich, K. M. Anderson, and I. Al’tman, War, Holocaust, and Stalinism: A Documented History of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR (Luxembourg: Harwood Academic), 174.
3. Rubenstein and Naumov, 8–9.
4. “Rech I.V. Stalina po radio 3 iyula 1941 goda,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duAdhke98xU; accessed February 1, 2016.
5. David Shneer, “From Mourning to Vengeance: Bergelson’s Holocaust Journalism (1941–1945),” in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 252.
6. Quoted in Sherman, in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 57.
7. Reproduced in Redlich, 175.
8. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, revised and enlarged edition (New York: Penguin, 1994), 78–90.
9. Arendt, 78.
10. David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 20.
11. Anatoly Kuznetsov, Baby Yar (Moscow: Astrel, 2010).
12. Shneer, 253.
13. Reproduced in Redlich, 186.
14. Kuznetsov, 116–119, 127.
15. Quoted in Shneer, 251.
Chapter 12
1. Quoted in Shneer, 253.
2. Quoted in Shneer, 259.
3. Quoted in Shneer, 260.
4. Quoted in Sherman, in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 65.
5. Quoted in Sherman, in Sherman and Estraikh, eds., David Bergelson, 64.
6. Quoted in Shneer, 262–64.
7. Ilya Altman, “Beliye pyatna ‘Chernoy knigi,’ ” at http://www.lechaim.ru/ARHIV/124/poznansk.htm; accessed December 15, 2009.
8. Ilya Ehrenburg, Lyudi, gody, zhizn, vol. 2 (Moscow: Sovetsky Pisatel, 1990), 358.
9. Altman.
10. Ehrenburg, 358.
Chapter 13
1. Rubenstein and Naumov, 18.
2. Rubenstein and Naumov, 18–19.
3. Israel Emiot, The Birobidzhan Affair: A Yiddish Writer in Siberia (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1981), 4.
4. Moyshe Tsekhtik, “V yevreyskom detskom dome,” http://shkolnik08.livejournal.com/205
76.html; accessed October 7, 2009.
5. Sergo Bengelsdorf, “Birobidzhan kakim ya yego pomnyu,” http://shkolnik08.livejournal.com/18476.html; accessed October 7, 2009.
6. Leonid Shkolnik, “Lyuba Vasserman: Arest i posle nego,” unpublished manuscript.
7. “Otchet o priyeme, razmeshenii i hozyaystvennogo [sic] ustroystva [sic] pereselentsev za 1949 god,” signed by S. Livshits and dated January 31, 1950.
Chapter 14
1. V. P. Naumov, ed., Nepravedny sud: Posledniy Stalinskiy rasstrel (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), 5.
2. Rubenstein and Naumov, 1.
3. Naumov, 6–7.
4. Vayserman, Birobidzhan: Mechty I tragediya (Khabarovsk: RIOTIP, 1999), 372.
5. Naumov, 82.
6. Rubenstein and Naumov, XII–XIII (with a single correction of the translation: Rubenstein translates besposhaden as “pitiless,” while I believe “merciless” is more accurate).
7. Indictment filed in the JAC case retrieved on December 21, 2009: http://www.hrono.ru/dokum/195_dok/19520403_eak.html.
8. Penal code of the RSFSR retrieved on December 21, 2009: http://stalinism.ru/Dokumentyi/Statya-58-UK-RSFSR.html.
9. Naumov, 11.
10. Naumov, 11.
Chapter 15
1. Vayserman, 372, 377.
2. Vayserman, 374.
3. Vayserman, 278–82.
4. Vayserman, 302.
5. Vayserman, 315.
6. Vayserman, 317.
7. Vayserman, 294.
8. Vayserman, 324–25.
Chapter 16
1. Vayserman, 357.
2. Vayserman, 359.