A play on Jewish emigration, and its tragic aftermath, was performed in the Ukrainian city of Vinnitsa, according to information received by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry. Entitled “Lost Horizon” the play was simultaneously broadcast on local radio.”
The Conference said that the play’s plot centers on a Jewish engineer who cannot find a good job in the Soviet Union. Out of anger he emigrates to Israel, where he still cannot find the job he desires: His wife starts to work for the rights of the Palestinian people and he turns her in to Israeli at the request of the woman he loves. The Jew later discovers that she is a prostitute, paid to lure him out of the USSR.
Margy-Ruth Davis, executive director of the Conference noted that the play follows a standard theme in Soviet anti-Semitic literature, which openly seeks to discourage Jewish emigration by trading on classic anti-Semitic stereotypes.
“The women in the play are meant to stand in contrast to each other,” Mrs. Davis said. “One stands for the ideals of the Russian people; she is betrayed by her opportunistic and money-grubbing Jewish husband. The other woman is the mold of the Jewess as temptress and prostitute. Recent anti-Semitic pieces have identified Hasidic women, especially, as prostitutes.”
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.
