Language:
English
Year of publication:
2020
Titel der Quelle:
In Geveb; a Journal of Yiddish Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2020) 21 pp.
Keywords:
Bergelson, David, Criticism and interpretation
;
Hofstein, David, Criticism and interpretation
;
Jewish Antifascist Committee
;
Yiddish literature History and criticism
;
Yiddish newspapers
;
Jews Politics and government
;
Yiddish language
;
World War, 1939-1945 Influence
Abstract:
Soviet nationalities policy towards its Jewish citizens was in flux during the first two decades of the new communist state’s existence. While Yiddish was made an official language and benefitted from unprecedented state support in the 1920s, the 1930s were largely marked by renewed repressions. The outbreak of the Great Patriotic War between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in June 1941 meant a new renegotiation of power between Yiddish culture and the Soviet government. Previously stifled Jewish connections across borders were renewed, as is best represented by a major August 1941 rally in Gorky Park, which was broadcast to a Jewish audience abroad and from where Dovid Bergelson made an appeal to his “brother Jews of the entire world!” This article looks at the wartime artistic and journalistic output of Dovid Bergelson and Dovid Hofshteyn, two prominent Soviet-Yiddish writers and members of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, to see how these writers appropriated Soviet terminology which called the Russians the “elder brothers” of the Soviet family in order to paint Soviet Jews as the elder brothers in a worldwide Jewish family of their own. To do so, they reminded their audience of the Jewish connection to Ukraine, which was currently under attack, demonstrated the ways that Soviet Jews maintained an authentic connection to that land, and exhibited the effect that Soviet power had had in cultivating the Soviet Jews for their new role, having turned them into suitable leaders of the future Jewish family.
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