Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 54, No. 49, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 7, 2000 Page: 37 of 48
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HANUKA ISSUE ■ IN OUR S4TH YEARI - DALLAS, THURSDAY. DECEMBER 7, 2000, TEXAS JEWISH POST 37
By Jimmy Wisch
Editor and Publisher, Texas Jewish Post
©2000 By Jimmy Wisch
I’ve been reading about the sublineal (and overt) anti-Semitism that is still
occurring in Russia, long since the walls of enslavement were supposedly demolished
in East Germany and carried its message to the High Communist regime in the Soviet
Union. Soviet Russia became divisible but alas still visible: especially in the
These questions and others like them confused me.
“That my belief in the liquidation of anti-Semitism was only an illusion I began to
understand when I finished the Institute and began to look for work. No one was
interested in my knowledge and capabilities. The fact that I belong to the Jewish
nationality closed hermetically all opportunities for work in a high ranking library.
With difficulty I managed to find work in Odessa in a minor library, where I work to
this day.
“With renewed intensity tens of questions 4 why’ rose up before me to which I found
no answers, in official literature. I began to read “samizdat.”
“The sentencing of Joseph Brodsky I perceived as part of a new stage of Soviet anti-
Semitism. The poet was condemned on the evidence of patent anti-Semites who did
not even know him personally, while the efforts of Marshak, Tshukovski, Paustovski
and others who cried out in his defense were of no avail. After this came the trial of
undercurrents of anti-Semitism which were flourishing like underground rivers of Daniel and Siniavsky. What astonished me was the hypocritical, Jesuistic censure of
Siniavsky for anti-Semitism. ‘
“In search of a solution I began to think more and more of Israel. The prelude to the
Six Day War shocked me to the foundations. It seemed to me that
all the world looked on apathetically while well-equipped armies
of 1 (K),(XX) men prepared to finish Hitler’s work, to annihilate the
small Jew ish nation of two and a half million, to erase off the face
of the each the State of Israel, reborn after 2000 years. The eve of
the war when the Straits of Tiran were closed and the U.N. forces
expelled and the Arab armies approached the borders of Israel, and
Fedorenko in the U.N. said cynically ‘Don’tover-dramatize events,’
1 was close to nervous exhaustion. I wanted to shout to Humanity,
‘Help!’
“Then I understood that I could have no future in the country in
which 1 was bom, and that I have no alternative save reunion with
my people who had suffered so much, in my ancestral homeland.
“I remember the unbounded pride and happiness when the
reborn David again conquered Goliath. The flood of anti-Semitic
curses and hysteria from the Soviet press, radio and television
forced me to feel even more strongly the unbroken bond to Israel
and personal responsibility for her. I began actively to interest
myself in everything connected with Israel. And friends who felt
as I discussed the possibility of leaving for Israel.
“The press conference organized by the Authorities in which the
‘loyal’ Jews slandered Israel in the name of all Soviet Jews,
meaning also in my name, aroused a deep bitterness. How to shout
out that they are just a tiny group and that the majority thinks
otherwise? And then I heard over the radio the letter of the 39. How
sorry I was that I could not also sign that letter! I taped this letter
and typed it so that my friends could also read it.
"I applied to P C) B. 92 with a request to locate my relatives in Israel. And then the
hate.
When Jews helped start the former Russia back up the ladder of industrialization
they soon became targets. I’ve seen this through the 1920s and
1970s. In the 1960s and 1970s I had the privilege of being allowed
into the Soviet Union during the frigid Cold War that was waiting for
the spark that might ignite it into a Fierce and catastrophic atomic
war. It could have easily have happened. My visit was predicated on
interviewing high officials and ordinary Russians to try and con-
vince them that we were all humans and that peace was a better
prospect than a Fiery war which could have ignited and eliminated
most of the world’s humans.
I still think of that and thank all powers that we did not engage in
and walk over the precipice.
A story that remains with me entitled “A Matter of Fact,” appeared
in your Texas Jewish Post of May 20,1971 underjess jawin’s banner.
It follows:
A few years ago we were in Odessa, the Black Sea port in the
Soviet Union.
Our entire schedule was snafued during our stay because the city
was engulfed by intense fog and besides a few special trips to the
outskirts of the city, for most of the Five days we were doing in depth
interviews with the average Russian.
Our guide-interpreter was a fanatic communist who thought
everything inside Russia was excellent and the best and everything
outside the territories of the Soviet Union were decadent.
Some of you may remember how furiously she reacted when she
had to escort a “capitalistic American.”
The epilogue to that visit comes now and this story is being written
for that fanatical, super-patriotic Russian communist, who wraps herself in the
hammer and sickle and is oblivious to everyone else around her.
Raiza Palatnik
It is the story of Raiza Palatnik. a Jewess, who is also from Odessa and who was Secret Service began to show an interest in me. They searched my apartment and that
recently arrested by the Russian Secret Police, KGB, because she professed her of my parents. I am constantly summoned for questioning. My friends and relatives,
the people I work with are interrogated and pressured to give witness to my anti-Soviet
activity. I understand that arrest and maybe years of imprisonment await me. But I
know one thing positively: my fate is tied irrevocably to Israel and no imprisonments
in Leningrad, Riga and Kishmev can halt the struggle for repatriation to Israel.
“To my regret I do not know my peoples tongue, Hebrew, but in my trial I will cry
out against all anti-Semites in the Yiddish I was taught by my Mother and Father.
“(signed) Raize Palatnik
Odessa, USSR
Yakir St. 23, Apt. 3”
The above letter was written exactly six months ago — Nov. 20 — and the events
which followed are in classical Russian communist routine.
Raiza was arrested December 1 and later that afternoon four KGB secret police,
including Chief Investigator Ivanovitch Larionov, searched Raiza’s apartment.
What was the mighty police arm of the Soviet Union looking for in this poorly paid,
harassed and hounded librarian's tiny flat? A sinister plot? A conspiracy to overthrow
the Soviet authority by armed force?
Nonsense!
They searched her clothing meticulously to see if any labels read “Made in Israel.”
They combed books and reading material to try to detect any words or inferences
which could be labeled “material slandering the Soviet Union.”
Listen to what the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews says:
“ConFiscated were stones by the Jewish author Bergelson, published in Moscow,
biography of Yakir (the apartment being searched was on Yakir St.), Soviet maga-
zines containing Babi Yar’ by Yevtushenko and Kuznetsov, and articles by Stalin on
Judaism openly.
The ironic part of the story is that Raiza and our Russian guide are the same age,
contemporaries, and they may very well have played with each other, attended school
together, crossed one another’s path in the street, at the opera.
Here is Raiza Palatnik’s story, in her own words, smuggled out of the Soviet Union:
“After the last conversation with the KGB interrogator who again threatened me
with arrest, I decided to write this letter, as I am afraid I will not be able to tell my
friends and dear ones what has formed and motivated me in my 34 years.
“In the eight grade my refusal to learn Ukrainian and insistence that my mother
tongue is Yiddish confounded the school authorities.
“I was 14 when the unbridled anti-Semitic campaign known as the struggle against
cosmopolitanism and ‘besrodnya Cosmopolity began. I remember the atmosphere of
fear and trepidation in the family awaiting something terrible, frightful, and unavoid-
able. During that period I kept a diary. Now that I reread it before destroying it so that
it will not fall into the hands of the KGB, I again relive the pain and bitterness, anger
and resentment. Already then I could not understand why it was sufficient to be a Jew
in order to be ostracized and persecuted. .
“But Stalin died. The doctors were rehabilitated. Bena and his henclunen were
executed. With childish naivete I exulted and believed that Justice had triumphed.
“I entered the Institute for Librarians in Moscow. I remember the enthtmasm with
which I received the condemnation of the personal cult of Stalm by the 20th Congre**
of the Communist Party. But why did they not drop so much as a hint on the physical
destruction of the best representatives of the Jewish Intelligentsia from 1949 to 1952.
Why did they not condemn anti-Semitism which had been raised to the rank of internal
policy? Why did they not open Jewish schools, theaters, newspapers, magazines^
MY FATHER, THE PUBLISHER p. 3*
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 54, No. 49, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 7, 2000, newspaper, December 7, 2000; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth754264/m1/37/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .