WITHIN THE past few days opponents of apartheid commemorated the twentieth anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre when South African police gunned down 67 Africans (graphically pictured above). Afrikaanerdom would not bow before the winds of change or even sway in the breeze. Sharpeville was a political watershed, for it turned South Africa into a feared … Read more
Testimony: The Memoirs of Shostakovitch ed. Solomon Volkov No Travel like Russian Travel: by Nora Beloff For decades, Dmitri Shostakovich was presented as the personification of all that was best in Soviet culture. On his death in 1975. the accolades from the high and mighty cattle cascading down in a torrent of grief. Behind the … Read more
IN 1947, the Soviet Union supported the partition of Palestine and the establishment of a sovereign Jewish national State. It promoted the cause of a new Israel with great vigour within a de facto recognition of the Zionist solution to the Jewish problem. In November, 1947, stating the case for a Jewish State, Andrei Gromyko … Read more
Throughout the centuries Jews have been associated with the struggle for human rights – not only for themselves, but in spirit, and more often in practice, for the community in which they lived. This was, perhaps, an outcome of the ethical teachings of Judaism that, in the depths of persecution and personal suffering, a Jew … Read more
While I appreciate Zeev Ben-Shlomo’s general review of my book, “Exit Visa,” I cannot accept the .contention that the Moscow Helsinki Committee did not play an important role in the life of the Jewish emigration movement between 1976 and 1978. Jewish participation in the committee’s work was not the action of a few isolated desperate … Read more
The trial of Iosif Begun is scheduled to begin tomorrow (Friday) in Moscow. He is charged with parasitism and could receive one year’s imprisonment. He has been on hunger strike in his cell in protest against the charge. Begun ‘was arrested the day before the publication of the Izvestia article in which seven Jewish activists … Read more
This week marks the seventh anniversary of the start of the first Leningrad trial which culminated in the death sentences for Mark Dymshits and Edward Kuznetsov and lengthy prison terms for the other defendants. After protests from the west, those death sentences were commuted to 15 years in strict regime labour camps. The Leningrad prisoners … Read more
SIXTY years ago, one of the most momentous events to influence the destiny of the Jewish people took place in Petrograd. The Russian Revolution occurred within a few days of the Balfour Declaration, and both events have, in hindsight, deeply permeated Jewish consciousness and caused many to flock to either one of the utopian standards … Read more
To the English courtroom, he was Victor Ben-Ari. To the judge, the charge was a simple case of obstruction. To the audience, he be another foreigner making a nuisance of himself. The pedestrians of the Bayswater Road knew better. They had seen a small mustachioed klbbutznik starve himself for over a week near the Soviet … Read more
I first met Ilana Friedman two years ago in Tel Aviv. Seeing her in the Anglo-Saxon civility of a Hampstead flat, I was struck by the uncanny resemblance she bears to her famous sister, the Moscow refusenik, Ida Nudel. At 43, Ilana is three years younger than Ida and is her only living relative. She … Read more