Writer Finds Problem Ends in Soviet Union

Where The Ghetto Ends. By Leon Dennen. Alfred H. King, Inc. $2.50.

Mr. Dennen has gathered together between covers a number of interesting stories of the Jews in the new Russia and has linked them together by the thesis in the light of which his recent Russian trip was colored.

Against the tones of hope, joy and enthusiasm in which he pictures Jewish life in the Soviet, he has contrasted the life of Polish Jewry in tones of bitterness and tragedy.

In these parts of the book he has dramatized and personalized the frightful story of contemporary Jewish existence in the Polish Republic which the newspapers have brought to our attention repeatedly in the past few years. He has, however, succeeded in bringing out the utter helplessness and spirit of hopelessness of the Polish Jews and revealed their living death.

Contrasted to this black picture of Poland, Mr. Dennen paints a Russia in rosy hues, where anti-Semitism is an offense against the state and the Jews—particularly the younger Jews—are happy in their escape from the ghetto.

Some of Mr. Dennen’s chapters make fascinating reading, despite certain obvious defects in style. His pictures of life in the Crimean colonies are particularly interesting.

In his conclusion, Mr. Dennen reports himself being asked:

“Is there a solution of the Jewish problem?”

To this he replies affirmatively:

“There is no Jewish problem in Soviet Russia. And when the Jews over the rest of the world, like their Russian brothers, join the great movement for liberation of all humanity, they, too, will achieve freedom. . . . “

This is the thesis which dominates Mr. Dennen’s book and which prevented him, perhaps, from penetrating more deeply into the situation of the Jews of Russia. It is this belief of Mr. Dennen’s that the reader must bear in mind as he reads Mr. Dennen’s glowing accounts of the end of the Jewish problem in the land of the Soviets.

G. R. M.