Purely Commentary
Freie Arbeiter Stimme--80th Anni4ersary
of Organ of Jewish Anarchists in the U. S.
While the Yiddish press has declined in circulation and in the
number of daily newspapers published in this country, there remain—
in the number of writers who have survived the reduction in literary
productions in the language that was the medium of expression for
millions for many years—interesting factors to draw attention to
Yiddish.
Books have been published on Yiddish, there is frequent quotation
from the Yiddish in non-Jewish texts and study groups are being formed
for the advancement of Yiddish. They are not vast in number but they
add to the interest in the language.
Special interest currently attests to an anniversary—the 80th of
the publication of the Freie Arbeiter Stirnme—Free Voice of Labor.
Its editorial staffs during the eight decades included some of the
ablest Jewish writers. Poets, novelists, essayists contributed to the
literature that revolved around the Freie Arbeiter Stimme's ideology.
and the FAS's role which, while not on a very large scale, nevertheless
left its mark on Yiddish literature and on the history of the labor
movement in this country.
FAS as a newspaper retains the admiration of lovers of purity
in language. It is to this day the finest literary product published
in Yiddish. It retains the basic principles of good literature and of
grammatical purity.
As a Yiddish periodical, as an organ for those who hold fast to
anarchist ideas, FAS is unique. It certainly is not destructive, contrary
to views people may get the moment anarchism is mentioned. Its
analyses of Jewish and world issues have been superb. It's an experi-
ence to read this magazine and to admire its style and the determi-
nation of its sponsors to keep it alive.
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Any Hope for Genocide Convention?
Without American approval, adherence to the principles of the
United Nations Genocide Convention which declares mass murder of
peoples an international crime will remain unenforceable. Yet it was
this country that first gave the idea impetus.
Perhaps the Ad Hoc Committee on the Human Rights and Genocide
Treaties, organized under the chairmanship of Arthur J. Goldberg,
will have better luck in urging the U.S. Senate to adopt the convention.
President Nixon called for the Senate's consent to the UN Geno-
cide Convention in February 1970 when he stated in a message to
the Senate:
"I believe we should delay no longer in taking the final con-
vincing step which should reaffirm that the United States remains
as strongly opposed to the crime of genocide as ever."
In November 1970, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted
10 to 2 to recommend ratification, yet there was no action by the
Senate itself.
Drafted with the active cooperation of the United States delega-
tion to the UN, accepted unanimously by the General Assembly in
1948, the Genocide Convention has been adopted by 75 nations to date.
But the opposition of the American Bar Association continues to
stand in the way of U.S. support of this important convention. Per-
haps the new pressure by the new committee will bring the desired
results.
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Peace So Vital for Egypt
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•
Peace unquestionably is vital for Israel. But it also is so very
important for Egypt.
A report from Cairo, last week, stated that since the cease fire
last August the tourist trade rose immensely in Egypt.
In 1966, 73,000 Americans visited Egypt, and that number dropped
to 22,000 in 1968. But In recent months, since an end to the firing
between Israel and Egypt, the Nile Hilton Hotel has been overcrowded.
Guests had to be accommodated in cabanas at the hotel's swimming
pool, and business returned to normal during the period of a nominal
truce.
Is it any wonder that Sadat and associates were so hesitant, even
in their limited fashion, in calling a halt to cessation of warfare, with
their half-hearted concession to negotiations?
All have much to gain. Is justice to the Jews the eternal obstacle
to good will and to peace? And will the Egyptians sacrifice their tem-
porary gains on an altar of hatred?
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Philo - Semitic Ranks on the Rise
We have mentioned Christian defenders of Israel. There are many
who deserve recognition, and their ranks are increasing.
A sample of the form such defense assumes appeared in a letter
published in the New York Times. It was related to a debate over the
democratic functions of Israel and an Arab spokesman's attack on
Israel. Dr. Franklin H. Littell, professor in the department of religion
at Temple University, thereupon spoke out, writing as follows:
Prof. Paul A. Reynolds of Wesleyan University (letter Feb.
22) attempts to defend Dr. M. T. Mebdi by advancing arguments
which he himself did not make. Dr. Mehdi did not argue that
Israel was not a democracy because it was a sacral society, unlike
the U.S.A. For that reason I wrote my rely, because Dr. Mehdi's
credentials on American religious history are as suspect as his
opinions on Israel.
The question of who is a credible witness Is relevant, and
Reynolds' charge that my quotation from Dr. Mehdi was "warped
out of context" is false. I might have gone on to point out that
the same' Dr. Mebdi stated on TV that Robert Kennedy's murderer
should be freed and sent back to Jordan as a national hero, and
that he also termed the skyjackers who blew up the 747 plane at
the Cairo airport patriots.
It may be titillating for professors in armchairs to defend
friends of murderers and Russian-paid partisans who kill school
children. Personally, I do not regard such persons as credible
witnesses on the time of day, let alone the survival of the only
representative government in the Middle East.
Nor do I find the malaise of anti-Semitism, which is the root
of such vicious politics in Christendom and Islam both, to be
suitable material for "objective" discussion.
It's regrettable that the bluff has to be called so often. How else
is truth to be related to the conditions that plague humanity? It is
good that men of faith also demand fact and truth.
2—Friday, March 12,
1971
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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How Jewish Legacy Reaches Its Inheritors in
Russia . . . Facts Refute the Myths and
Fables . . . Cairo Gains From Cease Fire -
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By Philip
Slotnovitr
How do young Russian Jews discover their identity and then become deeply involved
in the affairs of their ancestors? Many personal documents have been released in recent
months in statements made fearlessly by Russian Jews who affirmed their determination to
leave their motherland and to seek haven m Israel. They did not condemn the Soviet Union or •
express hatred for the land of their birth in which many generations of their ancestors had
lived, and struggled. They objected only to injustice and prejudice and reserved the right to
adopt the nationality of their fellow Jews.
One such story was related in a special article in the New York Times on March 4
by Alla Rusinek, a 22-year-old emigrant who settled in Israel and is now visiting in the
United States. She was married less than a year ago, but the exit visa was granted only to
her a week after her marriage. She was given six days to leave.
Dramatically, her New York Times article carried a postscript that after she had
written the account of her discovery of her Jewish identity—on March 3—she learned
that her husband also was given an exit visa to join her in Israel. She expressed thanks to
all, "particularly the American people,"for aid given. She related:
I was born In Moscow in 1949 and was the most typical Soviet girl. I studied well, was a
young pioneer-Leninist. My classmates thought me very ambitious. But they were wrong. My family
was very poor. Mother brought us up, two daughters, without a father and having a very low salary.
We never had new clothes. I never thought about our poverty. I was sure that everybody lived this
way, at least the families of engineers, because my mother was an engineer.
I gave all my time to my school, my pioneer organization and later the Young Communist
League—the Komsomol. I worked hard. And I was happy coming home late after school. Accord-
ing to Communist ideals "the individual must sacrifice his own personal interests for that of the
socialist society at large." And I loved my country, my Soviet people.
My' Yes, I thought it was mine. Bat there was something that made me different from other
people. I happened to be born a Jew. I don't know what It meant but it was written in my identity
card: yevreika. My Russian classmates insulted each other with this word. I saw it written in chalk
on the walls of the houses. It was written very distinctly in my Identity card and legalized by a
round seal of the government. At the beginning of every school year the teacher asked everybody:
"Your name and nationality." I answered in whispers.
Little by little I began to understand what it meant to be Jewish. In 1961 I was not admitted
to a special English high school. In 1966 I was not admitted to the Institute of Foreign Languages.
I thought it was my personal failure and couldn't understand why the examiner, looking at my
identity card, said that I didn't speak good Russian.
Well, in other words I understood at last. They don't want me, I am a stranger, this is not
my country. But where is a place for me? I began to be proud of being Jewish.
When I heard about Israel in 1967, about "an aggressive, capitalist state, an agent of U.S.
imperialism in the Middle East," I didn't fail to understand it was my home, my people, defending
their young state. I understood that to be Jewish meant to belong to the Jewish nation with its
history, culture, religion.
I began to study Hebrew. In some old books I learned the first facts about Jewish history:
the Maccabees, the Warsaw ghetto. For the first time in my life I went to the synagogue, the
only synagogue in Moscow, where I saw thousands of people who looked like me and thought like
me. We sang Jewish songs, we danced Israeli dances. It was wonderful but it was dangerous. Secret
police entered my life. I was expelled from the Komsomol, then I lost my job. They followed me,
they searched me, they called me in for "frank talks" and threatened me. What did I think then
about Communism' I didn't think. I was tired and frightened. For two years I applied for an exit
visa and was refused. I applied alone. Mother had died after eight years of dreadful disease.
I was not alone in this struggle. There were thousands of us in Russia who came to the synagogue
to sing. And among them was one, the most handsome boy in the Soviet Union at least. A year after
we met at a Hanuka party we married. We were in a hurry, any of us could be arrested then
in the summer of 1970. Most of our friends were arrested then in Leningrad and .Riga. We didn't
want to lose each other.
A week after our marriage I :was informed that I bad to leave the 'eountry Within sitr'elnys •
and alone.
Please, don't ask me what I felt. I don't remember. Perhaps I was in a- deep shock. No, I
didn't cry. His family paid for me the sum the Soviets demanded for "deminciation" of Soviet
I would '
coolffig_or
;
citizenship"-900 rubles (nearly $1,000). I never thought I owned such; an expeRsivs.
have sold it and bought something nice. All these months I have hoped thery. dthiwthim to
join me. We are husband and wife. One family. But he has not been
r. lis
You ask me what I think about Israel now that I live there. It. lel
question. It's the same as if you asked me what I thought about myself. Feriseti
Is me and I am Israel.
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This is only one of the many chapters in the drama of
a .
Meanwhile some Jews are leaving the USSR for Israel. Another group Of
efying • the
single appeal for visas last week. The courage of the many thousands w
s - *ill to live
Kremlin's restrictions is one of the most heartening demonstrations of a peo
in the way it chooses.
It cannot be said that the Russian government is indifferent to what is happening. It
keeps issuing reports and news stories to defend its Jewish position. It has published
pamphlets on the question, one of them as recently as last month, containing Novosti News
Agency reports, under the over-all title for its 30 pages of "Soviet Jews Reject Zionist
'Protection.' " Of course, the selections are from a handful under pressure and their arguments
become very dull with the flood of defiant requests for that very "protection" that is
questioned.
The other pamphlet with alleged facts about Russian Jews forces special attention.
It's an old compilation and it fails to show that only one of the 330 members of the
Communist Party Central Committee is Jewish; that of the 2,000,000 deputies in the Supreme
Soviets only 8,000 are Jews—.004 per cent of the total while Jews are 1.09 per cent of the
total population; that there are only two rabbis left in all of Russia; that for the 3,000,000
Russian Jews there are fewer than 100 synagogues left and the manyMinyanin" r merely in-
dicate a determined will not to abandon faith.
The USSR pamphlet on the Jews states that 3 per cent of all Soviet students in
schools of higher learning are Jews. But the percentage was 13.5 in 1935. Why the drastic
drop? Is the Alla Rusinek story more descriptive of fact?
Among the many Novosti releases emanating from the Soviet Embassy in Washington
is one bylined by Semyon Rabinovich, who lists successes attained by Jews in Russia .He
claims that the number of Jewish students in higher educational institutions rose from
79,500 in 1962-63 to 111,900 in 1968-69-315 college students for every 10,000 Jews as against
182 students for 10,000 in the entire population. He also states that Jewish scientific personnel
increased from 25,125 in 1950 to 63,661 in 1969. Does it prove Soviet freedom—even
tolerance—or does it emphasize an inherent Jewish desire to advance, to attain perfection
in the professional studies? -
And if there is as much freedom as claimed,.why do so many Jews wish to emigrate?
We know the claimed answer: it is Zionist propaganda. How did it reach a population
that was totally deprived of knowledge about their kinsmen unless they could attain it
clandestinely?
The Russian propagandists do not have a leg to stand on. The tragedy is that while ,
there can and should be amity there has been perpetuated Czarist anti-Semitism. That's why
the organized protest against the prejudicial USSR position.
If Russia were to abandon its anti-Zionist policy it could understandably also reduce '
its pressures on Israel and thereby delimit the East-West struggle in the Middle East. But
there seems to be little hope for that. The harassment of Western correspondents, the
attacks on Washington Post correspondent Anthony Astrachan because he had contacted
Russian Jews for their views, other antagonisms—all indicate a determination . to reject
peaceful and rational means of reaching accord, treating Jews justly and ceasing resort to
anti-Zionism as means of hiding the true intent: anti-Semitism.