By Semyon
Rabinovich

MOSCOW
journeyed to Kiev to visit places
connected with the life and work

of Sholem Aleichem, the Yiddish hu-
morist. My first call was at No..5
Krasnoarmeiskaya Street, in the down-
town district of the Ukrainian capital,
not far from the main thoroughfare,
Kreshchatik.

This house has a white marble me-
morial plaque that says: ‘‘Sholem
Aleichem, the illustrious writer, lived
here in 1897-1904.”’

When I approached the house, a group
of U.S. . Jewish tourists were reading
the inscription. I introduced myself. On
hearing that I was a journalist, the
overseas guests plied me with questions.
The group leader, Maurice Grubin of
New York, flashed a smile at me and
remarked: ‘“‘Ein got hot aich tzuge-
shikt’’ (One God sent you).

“‘What makes you think so?’’ I asked
him.

‘Because we’ve heard the most dread-
ful rumors about the life of Jews in
the Soviet Union.”’

We agreed to meet later at the Dnie- ~

per Hotel, where my new acquaintances
were staying.

We were joined by other American
tourists, who chanced to be in the
lobby at the time. The improvised inter-
view began with the travelers putting
questions to me. Some of them agreed
with what I had to say, others differed
and tried to prove their own points by
referring to stories printed in the Zion-
ist press in the U.S., while still others
preferred to keep quiet, probably think-
ing over what had been said and try-
ing to find a middle course.

I suggested we renew the interview
at the end of their tour, after their meet-
ing with relatives and friends, and with
Soviet people in general. :

When that day came, I did not have
to speak so much as at the first meet-
ing. To my deep satisfaction, the strong-
est objectors admitted that they were
wrong. Having come up against reality,
the callers from the U.S. grew con-
vinced that the Jews in the USSR were
getting on just as well as the rest of
the country’s citizens, that they enjoyed
all the benefits of a socialist society.

“We inspected a shoe factory,’’ Gru-
bin told me. “It’s a big, modern ‘enter-
prise furnished with the newest types of
equipment. We were received by the
head engineer, a middle-aged Jew. He
didn’t know English, and, therefore,
our conversation proceeded in Yiddish,
taught to him by his parents, he said.”

The New Yorker studied his notebook
for a few seconds, and continued:
...‘‘When we asked the head engineer
whether there were any cases of anti-
Semitism in the factory, he replied: ‘I
was a teenager when ‘I. came to this
factory. I was taught my trade by a
Russian. I studied, together with young
Ukrainians, in the evening department
of a college. We became fast friends,
worked together and improved our quali-
fications. Earlier, when I operated a
machine tool,.and now, as head engi-
neer of the enterprise, I’ve never ob-
served even the slightest sign of na-
tional enmity, of anti-Semitism in our
big collective.’

‘““*My children,’ the head engineer
went on to say, ‘attend school, my wife
is on the staff of a scientific research
institution, and my brothers and sisters
are employed at different state offices.
I’ve never heard any complaints from
them about being harassed.’ ”’

Grubin closed his notebook, and then

added:

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY,,NOVEMBER'5, 1971—PAGE 8

JEWS
IN
THE
USSR

Linocut by Rozinas from “Jewish Folk Songs”

“That head engineer didn’t lie at all.
I grew convinced of this after meeting
the family of my brother, Naum Gru-
bin. He’s an M.D., and his daughter is
also engaged in medical research, and
his son is an engineer. My sister, Anna
Kudish, is an experienced doctor, hold-
ing a high position in a big clinic, and
her son, an eminent engineer, was re-
cently awarded the Order of Lenin by
the Soviet Government for some impor-
tant invention.

“In a conversation with my nephew,
he asked me whether Jews in the U.S.
could find employment in all sectors of
the country’s economy.

“Of course, they can,’ I told him.
‘But there are quite a few cases. when

they’re simply turned: away from the,

door. For instance, an electric com-
pany, catering to two million Ameri-
cans, many of them Jewish, has only one
Jew on its staff, a bookkeeper. Unfortu-
nately, there are other companies of this
kind in my country.”’

&

I was born at the beginning of the
century, and brought up in a working-
man’s family, in the midst of tailors,
shoemakers, smithies, bricklayers, peo-
ple with and without trades, poor,
stripped of all rights, herded together
in several gubernia (counties) of the
former Russian Empire, in the so-called
“pale.’’ Paradoxically, there were more
small shopowners than customers in my
home town. :

We suffered double oppression, from
our own Jewish moneybags — religious
fanatics — and from the Czarist authori-
ties. Our children and grandchildren
know only from books about the long,
heavy, tormenting road to freedom.

The October Revolution of 1917 put
an end to all manifestations whatsoever
of national oppression, of anti-Semitic
excesses. It is in the Constitution of the
USSR that any national discrimination
or race intolerance are a violation of
socialist laws and punishable as crimi-
nal offenses.

The social and moral-political outlook
of the Jewish population has changed
radically. An end has been put once and
for all to pauperism that everlastingly
accompanies the broad masses under
capitalism. Historical experience has
shown that the overwhelming majority
of the Jewish population of the USSR
have taken the road of joint work and
residence in the midst of other Soviet
peoples.

Owing to my profession as a journal-
ist, I was able to observe the way the
profoundly humane national policy of the
Soviet Union was promoted on such a
grand scale among my people.

As a journalist. I was witness to the
mass-scale migration of inhabitants from
small towns to big industrial centers.

I was a witness to the formation in
the south Ukraine of four administra-
tive national Jewish areas, where thou-
sands of Jews, for the first time in the

history of Russia, rolled up their sleeves
and pitched into farm work (unfortu-
nately, these farms were completely
destroyed by the Nazis).

I went along with the first train-
loads of volunteer resettlers to Biro-
bidjan. These people subsequently trans-
formed the taiga into a flourishing land,
and, at the same time, re-educated
themselves.

I know of very many facts when in a
grim period of the war, the Soviet
authorities, right from underneath the
very noses of the Nazis, safely removed
tens of thousands of Jewish women,
children and aged folk to safety deep
inside the country.

I was an officer of the Soviet army
at that time. The sons of my people
fought selflessly side by side with Rus-
sians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Georg-
ians, Uzbeks and other Soviet nationali-
ties. They fought for the honor and free-
dom of their socialist homeland: 117
armymen of Jewish nationality merited
the highest decoration in the land, the
title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

At one time Tevye the Milkman,
that colorful personality in Sholem
Aleichem’s works, complained that God
created Jews and Gentiles. And if he
did, then why, Tevye asked, should they
be so disunited as though some came
from God and others not from him.
Tevye ought to have seen what beeame
of his descendants, thanks to the unfail-
ing friendship of nations, thanks to the
fact that in the USSR man is to man a
friend, brother and comrade.

In my Soviet mother country any per-
son can rise to any position in society.
It all. depends on his knowledge, effort,
ehergy, and honesty, no matter whether
he be a Russian or Tatar, Jew or
Ukrainian, Georgian or Chuvash.

It can be said with all confidence
that Jews, like representatives of all
other: nationalities in the USSR, are tak-
ing an immediate part in all phases
of state activity.

According to the 1970 USSR census,
the country has 2,151,000 Jews; 17.7% of
whom speak Yiddish, the language of
their nationality. Soviet Jews employ
the language of the national republic
where they live and work.

They treasure and understand Tolstoy,
Gorky, Yesenin and Blok, just as the
Russians treasure and © understand
Sholem Aleichem, Mendele, Mikhoels
and Markish. Present-day Soviet Jews,
both young and old; cannot conceive
life without a Russian book, without
Russian theater, music and painting.
They are keenly interested in the cul-
tural Ilfe of other peoples inhabiting
the USSR.

And at the same time, Jewish culture
continues to develop. At this moment,
the Jewish magazine Sovietish Heimland,
published in Moscow, is marking its
10th anniversary. In the past decade, it

ones

ed
has printed scores of novels, hundr

of narratives, thousands of ie
poems, songs, essays, and researe
literature and history. They el a
flected the different aspects of Ie
creative endeavor of the peoples i fi
USSR, meaning the Jewish popuié’.

tories; i

too. + works
ish their WO" @
Jewish writers publish instances |

Lury

prose by Eli Shekhtman, Note © i
losif Rabin, Samuil Gordon ant oh

well as new editions of
Yiddish literature — Sholem
Mendele, Moicher-Sforim, and 1.
etz.

tion of Sholem Aleichem’s works
sian was issued in Moscow — tig
ago with 225,000 copies in’ this P ‘i
Later four. volumes of selecte® ©. in
Kiev in Ukrainian, with theprelag

ten by Academician Mikola ae:
well-known Ukrainian poet. Mo

now getting ready to put a ghole?

enlarged six-volume edition °
Aleichem’s works. e Sov
In the period of 1965-1970, the >

Union has published 175 books oie

Jewish authors and seven ©
works and anthologies (with phe
10 to 50 contributors in each). 95
printings aggregate more than id
lion copies. They have come 0U vussi
dish, Russian, Ukrainian, Bye!

Lithuanian, Latvian, Moldavia™ Kirgih

ian, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkme!,

Ivrit, French, English and Spanist 3 ot
Moscow has recently put ° edited
sori j

lection of new Yiddish songs,
Dmitri Shostakovich, the fam0W iy
composer. A well-illustrated? cg
works by a noted Jewish artiste:
uelis Rozinas, has been print aries
nius. ‘Incidentally, the latest sett of
Rozinas’s canvasses on the S¥™ 4
Yiddish folk songs has bee? ny oil
great popularity at shows in m@

of the country. Jodi

The Moscow record firm, wai
regularly puts out LPs Wl)”. jea
songs performed by the coum
ing vocalists. 5

The classics and modern ee
sented by Yiddish People’s pe at
Birobidjan, Vilnius and Kishine ted

ers

full houses. Jewish profession@ enter

cal and variety companies also
Jewish audiences in differe?
the Soviet Union.

: viet oa
This is how Jews in the 5° if chit
ion. live, work, and bring UP Me |

dren, in close friendship with aiien®
Soviet people. They are an ratte aa
organic component of the /4. lle®

Zionists invent ridiculous a king ,

ing that Soviet Jews are to [st
nothing else but emigrating © jtte!
This is malicious slandet the

groundless. You may ask: arene colt

some Jews who wish to leave chic!

e
try? Yes, there are, but they eis a xa

those who wish to rejoil © ish
ones.
move to Israel for purely | per?
considerations. And, as with 4 0
there are dishonest elements
ure nothing. There are also ps int0
who are*asking to be let bae
Sviet Union from Israel. a
But the bulk of Soviet seve

vent patriots of their soca is
land, and their supreme en
gether with all the peoples, . h
a new life, the name of whit
munism.

re

_—Novosti Pre ~
wort MA

ish
At the same time, books by ith
writers appear in Russian trans ther
as well as in the languages e edi
peoples of the USSR. A six- vol Rus

d worl
of the Yiddish humorist :aPPe™ rit @*

ot
re |
iat

There are some wh? ign

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