The 25th anniversary of the execution of 24 leading Jewish intellectuals and writers in Moscow will be marked Aug. 12. The execution was the climax of Stalin’s terror campaign to eliminate all vestiges of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union. The execution of the Jewish writers took place one month after a trial in which they were accused by the government of being “enemies of the USSR, agents of American imperialism and bourgeois nationalist Zionists.”
Between 1948 and 1952, 431 outstanding Jewish artists were arrested. They included 217 writers, 108 actors, 87 artists and 19 musicians. Most of the prisoners died in Soviet labor camps.
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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.