Commemorative plaques dedicated to two members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee have been unveiled in Moscow

On February 10, activists of the "Last Address" project installed two memorial plaques on the buildings where members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC), executed on August 12, 1952, lived prior to their arrest. Indignant local residents prevented the installation of plaques for two other executed JAC members.

Initially, four plaques were planned for installation. A plaque was placed on Building 17 on Smolensky Boulevard in memory of Itzik Feffer, a poet and writer who originally served on the JAC presidium and later became its secretary. Feffer was arrested shortly after the start of Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign and the assassination in early 1948 of Solomon Mikhoels, Chairman of the JAC and Director of the State Jewish Theater. Under torture, Feffer confessed to the charges, but retracted his testimony during the trial. On August 7, 1952, the court sentenced all defendants in the JAC case, with the exception of academician Lina Stern, to death. On August 12, 1952, Itzik Feffer and his fellow defendants were executed.

For more information about Itzik Feffer, please visit the "Last Address" project website.

The second plaque was installed at 13 Kapelsky Lane. This was the residence of Leon Talmy, a journalist, translator, and Sovinformburo employee who participated in the activities of the JAC. Talmy was arrested on July 2, 1949, and, under pressure from investigators, confessed. He was executed on August 12, 1952.

In early 1953, Leon Talmy's wife, Sofya (Sarra) Abramovna Talmy, was exiled, like many other family members of those executed. She was released in 1955, at which time all those who perished or suffered in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee case were officially rehabilitated. She passed away in 1988 in the United States.

Sarra and Leon's son, Vladimir Leonovich Talmy, was arrested in 1947 and sentenced to 25 years in labor camps. Released in 1956, he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1979, where he worked as a teacher and translator and authored a memoir, "Full Circle: To New York and Back. The Story of My Life." He passed away in 2012.

In 1955, all those executed and repressed in connection with the JAC case were rehabilitated in secret, without public announcement, and it was not until 1988 that the rehabilitation was made public.

For more details on Leon Talmy, please visit the "Last Address" project website.

Bella Waldberg, Director General of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress Foundation in Russia, and Yuri Kanner, President of the Russian Jewish Congress

Two additional plaques were scheduled to be installed on the facade of one of the buildings of the "Budyonny Settlement" at 18 Bolshaya Pochtovaya Street. These plaques bore the names of a married couple – journalist Eli (Ilya Semyonovich) Watenberg and translator Chaika Semyonovna Ostrovskaya-Watenberg, who were arrested and executed in connection with the JAC case. However, the installation could not proceed. Shortly after the ceremony began, an elderly woman emerged from the building, declaring that she would not allow any plaques to be installed because "that American woman" had allegedly poisoned her in childhood, though she survived while "another boy died." When asked when she was born, she responded "in 1950." By that time, the Watenbergs had already been arrested. Nevertheless, myths and rumors surrounding the "enemies who poisoned Soviet children" evidently persist in the minds of certain segments of society.

Admittedly, these fabricated accusations were not the sole argument against installing the "Last Address" memorial plaques. Two other residents of the building came to the aid of the "poisoned" woman. They declared they would not permit the installation due to fears that it would confer a special state-protected status on their dilapidated building, thereby preventing its demolition and the relocation of its residents.

Faced with fierce resistance from the residents, the participants in the ceremony were forced to postpone the installation of the memorial plaques.

For further details regarding the repressions against the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, please visit the "Last Address" project website.

The Director General of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress Foundation in Russia, Bella Waldberg, attended the disrupted ceremony on Bolshaya Pochtovaya. She commented on the incident as follows:

"This is monstrous ignorance! It is painful to witness and hear outright hatred directed at those who, during the Great Patriotic War, established an organization that built favorable public opinion in allied nations and raised unprecedented funds for the needs of the Red Army, thereby contributing to the victory in every possible way. A significant portion of our citizens still believes that JAC members were American spies and 'Jews justly punished by the Soviet authorities.' For many people, they remain enemies of the state to this day.

Shortly after the assassination of Solomon Mikhoels, official propaganda would label him and his colleagues from the Committee as traitors engaged in nationalist activities directed by reactionary circles in the United States. Unfortunately, the consciousness of many of our citizens remains frozen at that point. At the point where the case was classified as top secret. Censorship strictly ensured that details of the tragic fate of the victims in this case did not become public. Even after the 20th Party Congress, few people in the USSR knew that the good names of the innocently executed had been restored, and that the verdict against all defendants in the case had been overturned due to the absence of a crime. We may not be able to change the minds of those who believe in Comrade Stalin. However, our task is to tell the truth to the rest.

The Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, in cooperation with the 'Last Address' project and other public organizations, will seek to disseminate historical knowledge and make every effort to assist in preserving accurate historical memory."

The Euro-Asian Jewish Congress has submitted several more applications for the installation of memorial plaques in memory of the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.