The ANU Museum and the Da Project Open an Exhibition Commemorating the 105th Anniversary of the State Jewish Theater

The ANU Museum of the Jewish People and the "Da" online educational project have presented a virtual exhibition of photographs from the personal archive of Alla Zuskin-Perelman, titled "105 Years of GOSET," in memory of Veniamin Zuskin and all the artists whose lives were cut short by the repressions.

The exhibition invites visitors to look into the family album of Veniamin Zuskin (1899u20131952), an actor of the Moscow State Jewish Theatre who played numerous roles in Yiddish productions alongside his friend Solomon Mikhoels. His life and work reflect the tragic fate of an entire generation of Soviet Jews and a culture that was crushed by the repressions of the totalitarian state.

The exhibition is accessible in the virtual gallery of the "Da" project.

To mark the opening of the exhibition, Dr. Haim Ben Yakov, Director General of the EAJC, prepared an introductory address:

Behind the cold lines of court transcripts and official documents lay live human destinies. Veniamin Zuskin was not merely an "accused in the JAC case," but above all a husband, a father, and an artist whose life was filled with the joy of creativity, family warmth, and pain for the fate of his native culture.

This virtual exhibition of photographs from the personal archive of Alla Zuskin-Perelman u2014 daughter of the great actor u2014 allows us to see Veniamin Zuskin not through the prism of the tragic denouement, but in the living context of the golden age of Jewish theatrical art in the USSR. These images are silent witnesses of a time when Jewish culture could still breathe freely, when GOSET was a focal point for the finest talents, and when Zuskin and Mikhoels created productions that became theatre classics.

In these family photographs, we see Zuskin during moments of creative inspiration, among theatre colleagues, and in his domestic setting with his family. These frames are exceptionally poignant because we know how his story ended. Yet that is precisely why they are so vital: they restore the human dimension to the tragedy, showing that behind every name on the execution list stood an entire life, full of hope, plans, and love.

The photographs from the Zuskin family archive are not merely documents of personal history, but testimonies of an entire era in the development of Soviet Jewish culture. They allow us to envision a time when all roads seemed open to Jewish art in the USSR, when Yiddish theatre was not a relic of the past, but a living, evolving form of cultural expression.

Today, as we mark the 105th anniversary of GOSET, these photographs take on special significance. They remind us of what was lost, but also of what has been preserved in memory, in art, and in the heritage passed down from generation to generation.

By opening her family archive to the public, Alla Zuskin-Perelman performs an important act of historical remembrance. Her father and his theatre colleagues were deprived of the opportunity to tell their story. Yet the photographs speak for them u2014 of creativity, friendship, and a love for art that proved stronger than fear.

We invite you to take your time exploring this exhibition. Behind every photograph is a story, behind every story is a person, and behind every person is an era that deserves to be seen and understood u2014 not only through the prism of tragedy, but also through the light they brought to the world.

On December 24, 1948, the arrests of the Committee members began. Transferred to the Lubyanka, they were subjected to exhausting interrogations throughout the four years of the investigation, with the transcripts sent directly to Stalin.

The chronology of events is established.

On November 20, 1948, a Politburo resolution approved the following decision of the Bureau of the Council of Ministers: "The Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the USSR instructs the MGB to immediately dissolve the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, since <...> this Committee is a center of anti-Soviet propaganda and regularly supplies anti-Soviet information to foreign intelligence agencies.

In accordance with this, the press organs of this Committee are to be closed and the archives of the Committee seized. No arrests are to be made for the time being."

As early as January 3, 1949, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) sent a closed letter to all regional party structures regarding the dissolution of the JAC and the prosecution of all associated individuals "convicted of espionage." Soon, anti-Jewish repressions swept the entire country.

The charges brought against the defendants were of the most implausible nature. For instance, the subject of our exhibition, the artist Zuskin, who inherited the position of artistic director of the State Jewish Theatre (closed in November 1949) from Mikhoels, was executed on the grounds that: "The Moscow Jewish Theatre, headed by MIKHOELS and, after his death, by the accused ZUSKIN, also played a significant role in spreading nationalistic views among the Jewish population. The Jewish Theatre staged mainly plays glorifying the old days, Jewish shtetl traditions and way of life, which aroused nationalistic feelings in the audience (Vol. 2, pp. 250u2013252)."

The closed trial of the 15 defendants in the "JAC case" began on May 8, 1952, in the hall of the Dzerzhinsky Club. Stalin personally monitored the preparations for the trial, receiving case documents.

On July 18, 1952, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Lieutenant General Cheptsov, sentenced to death the diplomat and publicist S. Lozovsky, the poet I. Feffer, the staff member of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR I. Yuzefovich, the physician B. Shimeliovich, the poet L. Kvitko, the writer P. Markish, the writer and playwright D. Bergelson, the poet and translator D. Hofstein, the actor and artistic director of the Moscow State Theatre named after Mikhoels V. Zuskin, the journalist and translator L. Talmy, the editor of the international department of the Sovinformburo E. Teumin, the editor of the foreign language publishing house I. Vatenberg, and his spouse, English-Yiddish translator Ch. Vatenberg-Ostrovskaya.

Presumably, the sentence was carried out on August 12.

Published in: Kostyrchenko G. V. In Captivity of the Red Pharaoh. M., 1994. P. 125 (photocopy of the document). RGASPI. F. 17. Op. 3. D. 1073. L. 18.

Unjust Court. The Last Stalinist Execution. Transcript of the trial of the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. M., 1994. P. 380.

See  Indictment in the JAC case.

See Cover letter to the indictment in the JAC case.