Tel Aviv University will assist in the publication of an unpublished novel by the late Russian-Jewish poet and writer Peretz Markish. The manuscript was rescued by a friend from the Markish home only minutes before the KGB (secret police) arrested him at midnight, Jan. 27, 1949, his widow, Mrs. Esther Markish, disclosed here. Mrs. Markish spoke at a reception on the Tel Aviv University campus marking the first issue of a university-sponsored periodical, “Shvut,” devoted to the current problems and recent history of Soviet Jews. It is edited by Yeheshua Gilboa.
Mrs. Markish, who arrived recently in Israel with her son, David, said the manuscript was secretly taken to Baku where David, then aged 11, buried it. Several years later the manuscript was dug up and was eventually smuggled out of the USSR and reached Israel.
Markish, one of the first victims of the Stalin purge of Jewish intellectuals, was never seen after he was taken from his home 24 years ago. An official statement said he was shot on Aug. 12, 1952. Fellow inmates at Moscow’s Lubianka prison claimed that he was tortured to semi-consciousness before his execution. Markish was posthumously rehabilitated in 1955 after Stalin’s death.
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