Stalin
WATCH: New Documentary Recounts The Search For Isaac Babel
The film “Finding Babel” portrays Andrei Malaev-Babel’s journey across the former USSR seeking traces of his grandfather, Isaac Babel.
Is Communism Worse Than Nazism?
My experiences growing up in the USSR and later in the U.S. taught me how awful communism really is — and how whitewashed its horror is among liberals
Finally, Der Nister Gets a Gravestone
A personal account of the journey up to the Arctic Circle where Soviet authorities had unceremoniously buried the great Yiddish writer in 1950.
Bernie Sanders Stint at 'Stalinist' Kibbutz Draws Red-Baiting From Right
Bernie Sanders’s time at an Israeli kibbutz that was once a pro-Soviet stronghold quickly spawned a torrent of red-baiting from the right. Will the ugly accusations hurt the Democrat’s presidential campaign?
Throwback Thursday: From Stalinist to US Spy
Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives.
Throwback Thursday: Yiddish Novelist Takes On Stalin's Terror
Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives.
Englander's Inspiration
The Forverts’s Rukhl Schaechter once heard a Yiddish professor complain that his American students knew nothing about Stalin’s execution of 13 Soviet Jews, which took place in August 1952. Even more discouraging, he added, was their “complete lack of interest” in the Yiddish culture that once thrived in the Former Soviet Union.
Nathan Englander Play Explores Stalin-Era Tragedy
Though it’s a bit stilted at times, Nathan Englander’s debut as a playwright, ‘The Twenty-Seventh Man,’ should draw new attention to Stalin’s execution of Soviet Jews.
Jewish Groups Remember 'Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee' at Gravesite in Moscow's Donskoy Cemetery
Representatives from a number of Russian Jewish organisations have gathered in the Donskoy cemetery in Moscow to commemorate the twelve members of the Jewish anti-fascist committee who were executed in August 1952 at the direct order of Joseph Stalin. The Jewish anti-fascist committee was founded in 1942 with the aim of enlisting Yiddish speaking Jews to support the Red Army against the Nazis. The movement spread to the US where American Jews with Albert Einstein at the helm pushed the US government to support the Soviet struggle against Hitler. Members of the committee, among them poets, writers and actors, were sentenced to death by Stalin after being accused of spying. At the ceremony in Moscow Yiddish teacher Anna Sorokina read Itsik Fefer’s poem I am a Jew to commemorate the murders.
Lustiger Counts Prostitute as 'Righteous'
In dire times, some people are given the opportunity to display what is best in human nature. Such is the message of a new book by Arno Lustiger, author of “Stalin and the Jews” and many other historical works including “Rescue-Resistance: Europe’s Rescuers of Jews in the Nazi Era” which was published by Wallstein Verlag in September.