Four tombstones bearing the names of authors murdered during the Stalinist regime will provide a grim backdrop Tuesday when the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry marks the 23rd anniversary of the massacre of 24 Jewish poets and writers in the Lubianka Prison in Moscow with a program of poetry readings on the steps of the New York Public Library in Manhattan.
Kings County District Attorney Eugene Gold, Conference chairman, said poems in Yiddish and English by the slain authors will be read by concert artist Theodore Bikel and members of Yugntruph, a Yiddish group. He said the deaths of the Jewish writers, poets and public figures climaxed a four-year campaign by Soviet authorities to eradicate Jewish culture in the USSR.
Between 1948 and 1952 some 431 outstanding Jewish artists were arrested. They included 217 writers, 108 actors, 87 painters and sculptors and 19 musicians. Most of the prisoners died in Soviet labor camps, Gold said.
“To this day, the barbaric crimes committed against the Jewish writers have not been acknowledged publicly by any official Soviet source,” Gold stated. Now, 23 years after the massacre, the anti-Jewish policies are still perpetuated by the Soviet government. Jewish culture remains under a sentence of death.
The irony of August 12, 1952, he observed, lies in the fact that in committing its despicable act of assassination, “the Soviet government could not foresee that no act of murder would ever crush the Jewish spirit. In fact, that tragedy made Soviet the Jewish spirit. In fact, that tragedy made Soviet Jews more determined than ever to dedicate themselves to their history and culture. In the face of harsh government restrictions against the practice of their culture or language, Soviet Jews have persevered over the past 23 years.”
On the anniversary of that “infamous event, it is essential that we in America rededicate our efforts to help free Soviet Jews, so that they can fulfill themselves as Jews wherever they desire,” Gold said.
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.
