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50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MURDER OF JEWISH POETS IN THE FSU Pres. Bush among speakers at memorial ceremony Earlier this month, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry hosted an event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Night of the Murdered Poets, an event considered of seminal importance in the history of Soviet Jewry. Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International and Co-Editor of Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, provided the historical context about the night on which 13 prominent Yiddish poets and writers were secretly executed on Stalin's orders. NCSJ Chairman Harold Paul Luks gave the opening comments and delivered a message to NCSJ from President George W. Bush. He then presented to His Excellency Yuri V. Ushakov, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Celled States, a commemorative edition of poems composed by some of the 1952 victims. Following Mr. Rubenstein's historical brief, NCSJ Secretary Lesley Israel and NCSJ Executive Director Mark B. Levin each read excerpts from the book. Vladimir Talmy, whose father, Leon Talmy, was one of the victims, also attended. Mr. Rubenstein described the executions as a culmination of the two major forces shaping Soviet Jewish history: World War II, and the creation of the State of Israel. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, of which the executed were members, was created in 1942 as a propaganda tool for the Soviet Union's role in World War II. Jewish luminaries and loyal Communists, such as poet Itzik Feffer and Moscow Jewish State Theater Director Solomon Mikhoels, traveled on missions to the Celled States to promote the Soviet fight against fascism, gathering US Jewish donations for Stalin's war effort. Throughout the course of the war, the Committee's efforts on behalf of Jews in Soviet territory contributed to a growing sense of Jewish identity, as the Committee contributed funds and other aid to local victims of the Holocaust. With the conclusion of war and the establishment of the State of Israel, Stalin initiated a series of secret trials, charging 15 Committee members of treason and espionage, despite a lack of evidence and over the objections of the judge, Stalin ordered the execution of all but two of the defendants; they were killed in the basement of Moscow's Lubyanka prison. One of the defendants fell into a coma during the trial and died several years later in hospital; another, the only woman in the trial, was sentenced to internal exile and returned following Stalin's death in March 1953.
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