19th Yahrzelt of Execution of 24 Soviet Jewish Artists Commemorated

Jews here, in Argentina and in England today commemorated the 19th anniversary of the execution by the Stalin regime of 24 leading Soviet Jewish writers and cultural leaders. The secret trial of those Soviet Jews–conducted July 11-18, 1952–marked the culmination of Stalin’s four-year anti-Jewish reign of terror, which claimed the lives of 443 Jewish writers, artists, actors, and musicians. Among the 24 executed on August 12, 1952, were Peretz Markish, David Hofshtein, David Bergelson, Leib Kvitko, and Itzik Feffer, the poet who was co-chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which was outlawed in 1948. Shlomo Mikhoels, the famed actor and co-chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was also executed in 1952. The Workmen’s Circle and the Jewish Labor Committee in New York recalled the yahrzeit with a request to the Soviet Union that Markish’s widow, Esther, and son, David, be allowed to leave for Israel. The Workmen’s Circle, a fraternal organization of over 60,000 members, and the Jewish Labor Committee, a human rights organization, expressed the hope that the growing chorus of concern and protest will induce the Russian rulers to accord to Jews as well as other Soviet citizens the rights to full cultural and religious freedom and the right to emigrate.

A meeting to mark the deaths of the 24 martyrs was held today in England. And England’s Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists requested the Soviet Writers Union to intervene on behalf of the Markish family. Esther and David Markish yesterday confirmed during a phone conversation with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that their requests for visas have been rejected twice. They said they had each given up their own writing careers. David is now a porter in a bakery. The phone conversation was initiated in New York by Boris Smolar, JTA’s Editor-in-Chief Emeritus. An appeal today by the Argentine Jewry’s central political body, the DAIA, asked the Soviet government to grant its Jewish citizens the same rights other Soviet nationalities have in the areas of education, language and religion. The DAIA protested the continuation of Soviet persecution of Jews who proclaim their Jewish identity by expressing their wish to emigrate to Israel.