The 70th anniversary of the 'Doctors' plot' and the 75th anniversary of the assassination of Solomon Mikhoels

Seventy-five years ago, on the night between January 12 and 13, 1948, the world-renowned Soviet actor and director was murdered near Minsk. Agents of the state security services liquidated the leader of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee — the informal “ministry of Jewish affairs” in Stalin's USSR — in a targeted covert operation. The assassination was staged as an accident. It was later revealed that the order to eliminate Mikhoels originated from the highest echelons of power. Other leaders of the JAC would subsequently be sentenced to death by firing squad. Exactly five years later, on January 13, 1953, the TASS news agency reported "the arrest of a group of doctor-saboteurs," and the "Pravda" newspaper published an editorial titled "Vile Spies and Murderers Under the Guise of Academic Physicians." These events would be etched into history as the era of state-sponsored Soviet antisemitism.

In light of these dates, the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress is actively contributing to the media, shedding light on these dark chapters in the history of Soviet Jewry.

Accordingly, the Institute for Euro-Asian Jewish Studies (IEAJS) has produced a special episode of the "Jewish Discourse" podcast:

Dr. Haim Ben Yakov, Director General of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, gave an interview to Israel's Channel 9, discussing the legacy of Solomon Mikhoels, the history of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and the systematic repression of Jews in the USSR: