JEWISH ANTIFASCIST COMMITTEE IN THE USSR

Moscow, ulitsa Kropotkina, 10, Telephone: G-6-71-00, G-6-47-07

[letterhead also in Russian and Yiddish]

21 June 1946

TO COMRADE M. A. SUSLOV, DIRECTOR OF THE SECTION FOR FOREIGN POLICY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

Pursuant to the inquiry of Comrade Shumeiko, we are providing some information about the Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR and its activity.

The Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR was formed soon after the first antifascist radio broadcast political rally of representatives of the Jewish people, which was held in Moscow in August 1941.

The Committee consists of 70 members (a list of Committee members is attached), and its executive committee has 19 members (a list of executive committee members is attached).

The working staff of the Committee consists of:

  1. Secretary of the Committee, whose duties (following the death of Comrade Shakhno Epshtein) are carried out by the writer I. Fefer, member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) [VKP(b)] since 1919.
  2. Deputy Secretary of the Committee, Comrade S.M. Shpigel'glias, VKP(b) member since 1919 and formerly a party worker.
  3. Senior editors: N. IA. Levin, VKP(b) member since 1944 and veteran of World War II; L. A. Gol'dberg, not a party member, former director of the publishing house Der Emes; editor S.O. Berman, VKP(b) member since 1940, veteran of World War II; and three translators and several technical workers.

In the course of the last two years, representatives of a series of foreign Jewish antifascist organizations have visited the Committee: Deputy Chairman of the Jewish Antifascist Committee of Bulgaria, Mr. Zhak Vradzhali; one of the leaders of the Union of Jews of Czechoslovakia, Mr. Rozenberg; representatives of Jewish organizations of France, Poland, et al.

Recently Mr. Ben Zion Goldberg (Waife), the son-in-law of Sholem Aleichem, visited the Soviet Union. He is a prominent public figure in the United States, a member of the executive committee of the Soviet-American Friendship Society (headed by Lamont), chairman of the Committee of Jewish Scientists, Writers, and Artists of the United States (Albert Einstein is president of the Committee), vice-president of Ambidjan, the All-American Society for Aid to Birobidzhan (president of Ambidzhan-- Steffenson). Mr. Goldberg is also a major American journalist, a contributor to the newspapers Toronto Star, Saint Louis Dispatch, New York Post, and Today, and to the magazine New Republic. Mr. Goldberg stayed in the Soviet Union from January 11 to June 8, excluding one month when he traveled to Finland, Sweden, and Denmark.

During his stay in the Soviet Union, Mr. Goldberg was received in Moscow by M. I. Kalinin and S. A. Lozovskii; he attended all meetings of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union; and he had a series of meetings with Soviet writers (including a banquet at the Union of Writers), with representatives of the Soviet Jewish community (at the Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR headquarters), with leaders of the State Jewish Theater, with the chief rabbi of the Moscow Jewish congregation, Shliffer, and with leaders of the Red Cross, among others.

Mr. Goldberg visited Riga, Tallin, Leningrad, Minsk, Vilnius, Kaunas, Kiev, Odessa, Lvov, Uzhgorod, Mukachevo, Brody, and Stalingrad. He was received by the leading workers and writers in the capitals of the union republics.

During his stay in the Soviet Union, Mr. Goldberg dispatched via the Soviet Information Bureau 33 articles to the American, Canadian, English, Palestinian, Polish, and Yiddish press. The articles were extremely friendly toward the Soviet Union.

Before his departure, Mr. Goldberg began to write a book in English entitled England, the Opponent of Peace, and a book in Yiddish entitled Jewish Culture in the Soviet Union.

Recently the Committee has received a series of requests from prominent Jewish public figures from several countries seeking assistance in visiting the Soviet Union. Such requests were received from: N. Goldman, the chairman of the executive committee of the World Jewish Congress; Dr. Stephen Wise, chairman of the American Jewish Congress; Louis Levine, chairman of the Jewish Union for Soviet Aid under Russian War Relief; Mr. Raiskii, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Presse Nouvelle in Paris; et al.

The Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR has sent during its entire existence one delegation, composed of Comrades Mikhoels and Fefer, to the United States, England, Canada, and Mexico. This delegations's trip report has been published in the book The Jewish People against Fascism (attached; see pp. 91- 129).

[signed]

Chairman of the Jewish Anfifascist Committee in the USSR: S. Mikhoels

Member of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR: I. Fefer

TRANSLATOR'S COMMENTS:

[Stamps at upper right:] Removed from the register; to the dossier of [blank] sector; date: 9 Jan. 1947. [Secretariat OMI], Central Committee of the Communist Party No. 2074 1 July 1946

[Handwritten marginalia at left margin of p. 1:] To the archive

[illegible notations and signature] The book stays. [signed] G. Shumeiko 25/1948

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