Activities
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).
The JAC broadcast pro-Soviet propaganda to foreign audiences, assuring them of the absence of anti-Semitism in the USSR. In 1943, Mikhoels and Itzik Feffer, the first official representatives of the Soviet Jewry allowed to visit the West, embarked on a seven-month tour to the USA, Mexico, Canada and Britain to drum up their support. In the US, they were welcomed by a National Reception Committee chaired by Albert Einstein and by B.Z. Goldberg, Sholem Aleichem's son-in-law, and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The largest pro-Soviet rally ever in the United States was held on July 8 at the Polo Grounds, where 50,000 people listened to Mikhoels, Fefer, Fiorello La Guardia, Sholem Asch, and Chairman of World Jewish Congress Rabbi Stephen Wise. Among others, they met Chaim Weizmann, Charlie Chaplin, Marc Chagall, Paul Robeson and Lion Feuchtwanger.
In addition to the funds for the Russian war effort — US$16 million raised in the US, $15 million in England, $1 million in Mexico, $750,000 in the British Mandate of Palestine — other help was also contributed: machinery, medical equipment, medicine, ambulances, clothes. On July 16, 1943, Pravda reported: "Mikhoels and Feffer received a message from Chicago that a special conference of the Joint initiated a campaign to finance a thousand ambulances for the needs of the Red Army." The visit also evoked the American public to the necessity of entering the European war.
Read more about this topic: Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“Love and work are viewed and experienced as totally separate activities motivated by separate needs. Yet, when we think about it, our common sense tells us that our most inspired, creative acts are deeply tied to our need to love and that, when we lack love, we find it difficult to work creatively; that work without love is dead, mechanical, sheer competence without vitality, that love without work grows boring, monotonous, lacks depth and passion.”
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“The old, subjective, stagnant, indolent and wretched life for woman has gone. She has as many resources as men, as many activities beckon her on. As large possibilities swell and inspire her heart.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)