The two daughters of the late Solomon Mikhoels, a Russian-Jewish actor who headed Moscow’s last Yiddish theater before he fell victim to the Stalin purge of Jewish artists and intellectuals it 1948, arrived in Israel today. Natalia Vofsi and Nina Mikhoels brought with them their father’s archives.
They said it became clear soon after Mikheols’ death in Minsk that he was wilfully murdered by KGB (secret police) agents on Stalin’s orders. Both daughters said they were never Zionists in the conventional sense and that they had received a “national cultural education,” But they said that as the years passed they came to the conclusion that their place was in Israel. They said they were convinced that their father would have come to Israel had he lived.
Gershon Avner, Israel’s first ombudsman, says his agency has done a land office business since it was established a year ago to adjudicate complaints from the citizenry against the government. Avner said his office handled some 10,000 complaints so far and had to hire 15 additional lawyers to augment the 18 already employed. He noted that the ombudsman in Sweden which has three times Israel’s population has had only 1300 gripes a year.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
