A Monstrous Case: the Holocaust, Soviet Jewish Writers, and the Fate of
the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
Lecture: Joshua Rubenstein
Tuesday, March 14, 7:00 p.m.
Boston College, Cushing Hall 001
Free and open to the public.
During World War II, the Kremlin organized five anti-fascist committees,
including a Jewish committee aimed at mobilizing support for the
alliance with the Western democracies against Nazi Germany. But
committee members felt a deep obligation to respond to the massacres of
Jews that the Nazis were carrying out on Soviet territory. Writers like
Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman organized a project to document the
catastrophe as the war still raged; they hoped to publish their reports
in /The Black Book/. But after the war, Stalin closed the Jewish
Anti-Fascist Committee and executed many of its members, including
numerous Yiddish authors. Publication of /The Black Book/ was forbidden.
This repression destroyed Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union and
endangered Russian-language Soviet Jewish writers. He is the Northeast
Regional Director of Amnesty International USA, and an Associate of the
Davis Center at Harvard University.
Rubenstein is the author of /Soviet Dissidents, Their Struggle for Human
Rights/; /Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg/; and
the co-editor (with Vladimir Naumov) of /Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The
Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee/. Rubenstein
received a National Jewish Book Award in the category of East European
Studies for /Stalin's Secret Pogrom/. His latest book is /The KGB File
of Andrei Sakharov/.
Sponsored By:
Jewish Studies Program, Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages,
Office of the Academic Vice President, The College of Arts and Sciences,
and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Copies of Mr. Rubenstein's books will be available for purchase and
signing.
Information: 617-552-4820
Boston College Maps and Directions <http://www.bc.edu/about/maps/>
http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/jewish/news/
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Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Harvard University
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Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617.495.4037
Fax: 617.495.8319
http://www.daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu