Attack On Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
Malenkov supported and executed Stalin's orders to destroy the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee which was formed during World War II and became involved in documenting the Holocaust. This ran contrary to the official Soviet policy to present it as an atrocity against all Soviet citizens, not acknowledging the specific genocide of the Jews. Some of the committee members were vocal supporters of the State of Israel, established in 1948, something that Stalin supported very briefly. Their international contacts especially to the USA at the outset of the Cold War, would eventually make them vulnerable to charges that they had become politically incorrect.
Solomon Mikhoels, the popular actor and director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater, was appointed the JAC chairman. The JAC's newspaper in Yiddish language was called Einigkeit (אייניקייט "Unity", Cyrillic: Эйникейт).
In January 1948, Mikhoels was killed in Minsk by the Soviet secret police agents who staged the murder as a car accident. The members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested. They were charged with disloyalty, bourgeois nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and planning to set up a Jewish republic in Crimea to serve U.S. interests. In January 1949, the Soviet mass media launched a massive propaganda campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans", unmistakably aimed at Jews.
Malenkov together with Beria, Mikhail Suslov and other top Soviet officials supervised the destruction of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.
Read more about this topic: Georgy Malenkov
Famous quotes containing the words attack on, attack, jewish and/or committee:
“Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“I make this direct statement to the American people that there is far less chance of the United States getting into war, if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis than if we acquiesce in their defeat, submit tamely to an Axis victory, and wait our turn to be the object of attack in another war later on.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“I got it! The lead, the idea, the angle. It’s the way, it’s the only way. I’ll, I’ll be Jewish.... I’ve even got the title: “I Was Jewish For Six Months.””
—Moss Hart (1904–1961)
“A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.”
—C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993)