Hundreds of men and officers of the Red Army and Red Fleet joined with thousands of civilians at Rosh Hashonah services in Moscow’s huge ornate Choral Synagogue. Every available bit of space in the synagogue was filled. Worshippers stood in the hallways, the aisles and crowded out into the street.
Among the participants were men from the Polish and Czechoslovak units in Russia and a lone American, Sgt. Harry Friedman of the United States Air Force, who told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent that he was attending the services in accordance with a promise he had made to his father in Brooklyn before he was shipped abroad.
As the cantor, Rev, Gilgin of Kishinev, intoned the traditional chants, one could almost feel the pent-up emotions of the congregation fighting for release. Finally, a mass well broke out from the women’s galleries. One girl screamed, “Mother, mother,” and other women picked up the sad refrain, bemoaning the loss of fathers, sons, husbands and daughters. There was not a person in the synagogue who had not lost a member of their family since the outbreak of the war.
Aged Rabbi Shliffer wept as he recited the prayers. Later he delivered a brief sermon stressing the unity of the Soviet people, and comparing this Rosh Hashonah to that of three years ago, when the Germans were at the gates of Moscow. He invoked the blessings of God upon the Red Army and Premier Stalin and called for vengeance against the forces which had decimated the Jewish people.
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.
