“Speak Russian. We don’t understand Yiddish,” was the reply received by a delegation of Jewish children who appeared today before the local Soviet in Horky, in the Minsk region, to ask for library facilities. The children had submitted a petition in Yiddish in the name of their school asking for library facilities.
The president of the Soviet, who knows hardly a word of Russian himself, demanded that the children address him in Russian and rewrite their petition in Russian notwithstanding the fact that 80 per cent of the members of the Soviet are Jews who know no other language but Yiddish.
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.
