The Times of London reported today a “curious story” to the effect that Stalin was planning to assemble all the Soviet Jews in a ghetto area just before he died. The Times says that the story is circulating among Communist Party members in Eastern Europe.
According to this tale, Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Party chief, is said to have told a small party meeting–after his famous anti-Stalin address at the 20th Communist Party Congress–that Stalin became more and more inflamed against the Jews after the fabrication of the “doctors’ plot” of 1953. On the day before his stroke in March, 1953, he told a meeting of Soviet leaders of his plan for removing all Soviet Jews to a new “pale” in the northern region of the USSR.
His listeners were aghast, the Times story said, and Anastasias Mikoyan and V.M. Molotov protested, asserting that this would cause indignation abroad. Marshal Klement Vorshilov is said to have called the proposal criminal and the kind of an outrage that aroused the world against Hitlerism. The story adds that Stalin worked himself into a rage as a result of this opposition to his plan and suffered a stroke the next day.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
