The true story behind the ‘Night of the Murdered Poets’
Yiddish actors will perform a documentary in a Manhattan theater, commemorating Stalin's execution of 13 innocent Jewish intellectuals
Josef Stalin
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The Schmooze Friday Film: Cartoons for Stalin
Although it may seem odd to hear a man who drew caricatures for a living talk about what it felt like to live through the horrors of the former Soviet Union, this is exactly what happens in the documentary “Stalin Thought of You.” Meet Boris Efimovich Efimov, a political cartoonist who witnessed every major event…
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The Schmooze When Mikhoels Came to America
A longer version of this post appeared in Yiddish. Some weeks ago, on December 12, I was involved in a commemoration at YIVO of the 120th birthday anniversary of the great Yiddish actor and director Solomon (Shloyme) Mikhoels. I am not sure if Mikhoels is well known among the younger generation in Russia, or anywhere…
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The Schmooze Gershom Scholem’s Brother
Many years ago, while researching German supporters of Holocaust reparations, I went in search of information on the social-democratic politician Kurt Schumacher. I found what I was looking for, but right next to Schumacher’s listing in an encyclopedia was a surprise: “Scholem, Werner, * 29.12.1895 Berlin, † 17.7.1940 KZ Buchenwald; konfessionslos.” It was Gershom Scholem’s…
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The Schmooze Isaac Babel’s Last Days in Lubyanka
During a script reading at the Jewish Museum London on October 24, two writers with mortality on their minds came face to face: the bushy-eyebrowed 83-year-old East End poet and kitchen sink dramatist Bernard Kops, and the eternally 45-year-old journalist and playwright Isaac Babel. “Some things grab you; you know what makes a play,” explained…
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The Schmooze Lenin, Stalin, and Jewish Musicians
On October 12, Paris’s Cité de la Musique opened a new exhibit, “Lenin, Stalin, and Music” which includes much fascinating material about the fate, and often the plight, of Russian Jewish musicians. With the benefit of hindsight it’s difficult to see why any Jews stayed in Soviet Russia. However, a brilliantly concise and well-illustrated exhibition…
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The Schmooze Soviet Literature in Dark Times
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. Translated by Ezra Glinter. When I bought Natalia Gromova’s book, “The Downfall: The Fate of a Soviet Critic in the 1940 and ‘50s,” it didn’t occur to me that it would have a Jewish dimension. I’m generally interested in this period and in this subject, and…
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