Rebecca Naomi Jones: The Wreckage is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation.
Additional funding is provided through the American Jewish Education Program, generously supported by Sid and Ruth Lapidus.
Archival Audio – Stalin is Dead (1953): [Music]
“Moscow heads the communist world in mourning the passing of Joseph Stalin. From a saluting base on Lenin’s tomb, he reviewed each year on Red Army Day men of the Soviet armed forces. Army, Navy, and Air Force. All had been fostered by Stalin himself. Until now they have become one of the greatest military powers in the world. His people regarded as a god this man who was born the son of a shoemaker, for above all he became a star to guide them to a more prosperous way of life. In return they gave him their undying devotion and accepted his every word as law. But one thing Stalin did not give them – their freedom – and that to countries outside the Iron Curtain means all.”
Rebecca Naomi Jones: On March 6, 1953, the world learned of the death of Joseph Stalin, the Communist dictator who had ruled over the USSR with unfathomable cruelty – an era marked by forced prison labor in the Gulag system, widespread famine, and mass deportations. Public executions and political violence became routine, and death toll estimates went as high as 20 million people.
In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, Soviet Jews found a softening of the antisemitic policies that were a key tenet of his regime. But as his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, rose to power following an intense battle for leadership, the Soviet Union remained far from a safe haven for its Jewish population.
From the American Jewish Historical Society, this is The Wreckage: Open Up the Gates. I’m your host, Rebecca Naomi Jones. This week, we meet The Delegation. Our story begins with the death of a despot, a power struggle, and the rise of a new Soviet leader.
Archival Audio, Shake-up at the Kremlin: A bold and daring gamble by Nikita Khrushchev. In 1956, in a weeping three-hour address he denounces Stalin as a murderer, a maniac, and a military plunderer. Delegates of the Communist Party Congress applaud the vilification of their fallen Idol and Nikita Khrushchev, his accuser, becomes the true successor to Stalin.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Joining us is Dr. Rafael Medoff, founding Director of the David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and author of The Rabbi of Buchenwald: The Life and Times of Herschel Schacter.
Dr. Rafael Medoff: After the death of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, in 1953, the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, began to show interest in what has become known as the Khrushchev Thaw. That is, an increased desire by the Kremlin to have more contact with the outside world, more international trade, relations with other communist countries from which the Soviets had generally been cut off before like Yugoslavia, and, in general, an openness to letting the outside world see some of the Soviet Union, as long as it could be manipulated for Moscow’s purposes.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: As part of the Khrushchev Thaw, the Soviet government began to allow visits from Christian clergy from the United States. Inspired by these visits, Rabbi David Hollander, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, submitted an application for a Jewish delegation to visit the USSR.
Dr. Rafael Medoff: To be clear, there had been almost no contact between the three million Jews in the Soviet Union and the outside world, including outside Jewish communities, for many decades. Over the years, every once in a while, there might be a visit to the USSR by, for example, some Jewish communists; or in the 1920s, some officials of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee when they were organizing agricultural colonies; but there had been no recent or substantive contact between Soviet Jews and Jews in the diaspora. So this was an extraordinary, extraordinary step for American rabbis to be able to come to the Soviet Union and to make contact with Soviet Jews.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Among the short list of potential delegates was Rabbi Herschel Schacter. Born in 1917, he was the youngest of 10 children to father Pincus, a Kosher meat slaughterer, and mother Miriam, a real estate manager. He and his siblings were raised in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York.
Dr. Rafael Medoff: Which, in the 1920s, when he was growing up, was one of the most heavily Jewish neighborhoods in the United States—in the world, in fact. It was a comfortable place to grow up for an Orthodox Jew. His family was what we would describe as Modern Orthodox, as opposed to terms we would now use like Haredi. It meant that he went to—for his education in his childhood, he went to private Jewish day schools. That was not common in the 1920s. There were not many private Jewish parochial schools. And even among Orthodox Jews, self-identifying Orthodox Jews, only a minority could afford to attend private Jewish schools. But Jewish education was important to the Schacter family, so Herschel was educated in those schools and then eventually made his way to what we now call Yeshiva University and received his rabbinical ordination from YU’s rabbinical school in 1941.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: The United States entered World War II at the end of that year, in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Many young Americans, including thousands of American Jews, enlisted in the armed forces.
Dr. Rafael Medoff: Now, Schacter’s parents were opposed to him enlisting in the military in World War II. As a clergyman with a new congregation in Connecticut, he had an automatic exemption from serving in the military. But his conscience bothered him. As he watched other young American Jews, including Orthodox Jews, going off to fight, he felt like he wasn’t doing his part. And so, over strenuous parental objections, he went ahead and enlisted in 1942, but enlisted as someone who wanted to become a chaplain, which meant being sent to the Harvard Divinity School, where he was part of a program with other clergy, Jews as well as Christians, who were trained for becoming chaplains in the army, some of whom would actually be in battle zones. Many would not.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: When he began his service, Schacter was initially stationed in Puerto Rico, where he provided religious services to both the local Jewish community and a small number of GI’s.
As his time in Puerto Rico progressed, and as the war against fascism escalated across Europe, Asia, and other fronts, Schacter was troubled by the idea that he might spend the war in such comfort and safety. He pressed for a new assignment, and in 1943, he was transferred to Europe, where he remained through the end of the war and beyond. In April of 1945, he found himself at the gates of Buchenwald concentration camp.
Dr. Rafael Medoff: This is an extraordinary set of circumstances in which he—well, to begin with, he risked—he placed himself in very difficult conditions where all sorts of diseases were rampant and in which he was constantly beset by desperate survivors who were looking for help, for encouragement, for inspiration. One can only imagine what a stressful and complex experience this was for him. But he stayed there. And he set up a little cot for himself in the camp infirmary so that he could sleep over in the camp many times. And for those two and a half months, he led religious services, the first that any of these survivors had attended in many years. He gave them hope and encouragement. None of them had ever imagined that they would see a US Army officer with the Ten Commandments pin on his lapel that Jewish chaplains wore, and, moreover, Yiddish-speaking. A Yiddish-speaking rabbi in a US Army uniform. This was an extraordinary sight. He was greeted as a heroic figure. And he was, in effect, the leader, the spiritual leader, for thousands of desperate Jewish Holocaust survivors in Buchenwald.
During those two and a half months, he helped arrange for hundreds of the children in the camp to be taken to Switzerland, which was willing to take in a modest number of Jewish refugees. He also helped to organize something that became known as Kibbutz Buchenwald, which involved organizing, in nearby abandoned buildings, a kibbutz. Dozens of young men and women from Buchenwald began an agricultural community in order to prepare themselves for immigrating to Israel—at that point, to British Mandatory Palestine.
So it was an extraordinary experience for Rabbi Schacter. And it seemed to me, from my research, that it was these months in Buchenwald that really shaped the entire rest of his career as a Jewish leader.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: After he completed his World War II service, Rabbi Schacter returned to the United States, and was recruited by a number of American Jewish organizations for speaking engagements. He traveled across the country, telling audiences what he had seen and experienced in Buchenwald. He felt a keen sense of responsibility to the victims and survivors to provide this eye-witness testimony, and advocated on behalf of many who sought to enter British-controlled Mandatory Palestine at a time when thousands were still living in displaced persons camps across Europe, stateless and without family.
In 1947, he left his small congregation in Connecticut and became rabbi of the Mosholu Jewish Center in the Bronx.
In 1956, Rabbi Hollander received word that his application to bring the rabbinic delegation was approved.
Dr. Rafael Medoff: The Soviet authorities were interested in having these American rabbis visit various Jewish communities because they were hoping that the RCA delegation would report back to American Jewry and to the world that Jews were living reasonably satisfactory religious lives, certainly no worse than other Soviet citizens, let’s say. So it was very much in the interest of the Kremlin to allow the rabbis to spend weeks and to visit all sorts of communities, as well as taking them to prominent tourist sites in between visiting with the various Jewish communities.
Now, the Eisenhower administration, 1956, was in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. This was not yet the era of détente that was pursued in the 1970s by the Nixon administration. The US government did not object to the rabbis going to the Soviet Union, but they were not enthusiastic about it either. And there are—we have conflicting sources from among the rabbis in the delegation as to how they were treated by the American ambassador in Moscow, Charles Bohlen. One of the rabbis gave the impression that Bohlen was very sympathetic and concerned about the plight of Soviet Jews, but another of the rabbis wrote in his private report that, in fact, the Americans were concerned about the rabbis attracting too much attention and causing controversy.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: That spring, rabbis Hollander, Schacter, Emanuel Rackman, Gilbert Klaperman, and Samuel Adelman entered the Soviet Union, and began a journey that would open their eyes to the conditions behind the Iron Curtain – and confirm some of their worst suspicions.
Archival Audio – Educational Film on USSR: “With government permission – official guides accompanied the cameraman to ensure that the better, more prosperous side of the Soviet Union be filmed…”
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Soviet authorities tightly controlled the delegation’s visit, and they were only taken to carefully-chosen locations that the Soviets were willing to let them see.
Dr. Rafael Medoff: When they were brought to Jewish sites like the Great Synagogue of Moscow, there were, of course, many KGB agents among those present in order to carefully monitor what was seen. As a result, the Jews who were able to make personal contact with Rabbi Schacter and his colleagues were very circumspect. But they found ways of making it very clear to Schacter that they were desperate, that they were suffering, and that they wanted to get out of Russia. They whispered to them—hopefully out of the ears of the KGB spies—“Get us out.” Or some of them would just say one word, but it was enough. Like “Yerushalayim,” Jerusalem.
Rabbi Schacter and his colleagues understood that they had to be very careful about what they said in public. So in the sermons they delivered at the Moscow synagogue and synagogues in Leningrad and elsewhere, they were very careful about what they said, but would include hints that would remind those in attendance that these American visitors understood how bad things were and wanted to help them if they could.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: During their visit, the delegation met with Soviet officials, including those from the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults, the government bureau that dealt with religious issues.
In a chance meeting, they were able to speak with Nikita Khrushchev directly.
Dr. Rafael Medoff: The meeting with Khrushchev took place entirely by accident. The rabbis were invited to a Fourth of July celebration at the American embassy in Moscow, and in the crowd, they spotted the Soviet leader, Khrushchev, and walked up to him. And Rabbi Hollander raised the question of the situation of Soviet Jews, although in a very cautious way. But the very fact that he even raised the issue no doubt made some impression on the Soviet leader.
He spoke about his hope—Rabbi Hollander spoke about his hope that Soviet Jews would soon be able to enjoy more synagogues and other Jewish religious institutions. To which Khrushchev replied, well, they’ve never asked for it. But despite the Soviet leader’s brusque response, still, there’s no doubt that the fact that these American rabbis were there and had the audacity to bring it up with him may have created some awareness among the Soviet leadership that there was a growing concern abroad about the situation of Soviet Jews.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: After leaving Moscow, they traveled to Leningrad, and found that conditions were relatively similar for Soviet Jews as they had been in Moscow.
Dr. Rafael Medoff: But when RCA delegation visited the region of Soviet Georgia, where they encountered Sephardi communities, they found significant differences; which was to say that the Sephardi communities were much more able to adhere to Jewish religious practices and had had a more intense and substantive Jewish religious life than their Ashkenazi brethren in Moscow or Leningrad. This made a significant impression on Rabbi Schacter. He wrote at length in his diary about how startled they were to find in the Georgia region Jewish communities that had Jewish education; and where brit milah, circumcision, was practiced; and where matzahs were available for Passover, which was something that was not true of the larger Jewish communities in Moscow, Leningrad, and elsewhere.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: When the delegation returned to the United States, they published a series of articles that were printed in the Journal-American, a daily New York City newspaper.
Dr. Rafael Medoff: They were very circumspect in those articles. It’s clear from the articles themselves, but also from the documents I examined, that Rabbi Schacter and his colleagues felt that they were not free to be too explicit about how bad the situation was in the Soviet Union. In other words, they felt that there was a certain understanding between them and the Soviet authorities: they would be allowed into Russia, they would be able to stay there for a number of weeks, and in exchange, they were expected to not be especially frank or critical of the Soviet treatment of Russia’s Jews.
So in this series of articles in the New York Journal-American, they acknowledged that Jewish religious life was very difficult, that there were very few synagogues, that there were no yeshivas, that keeping kosher was extremely difficult; at the same time, though, in the articles, they injected what seemed to be positive notes, saying there are plans to open a yeshiva soon and a rabbinical seminary. There is talk of opening a kosher restaurant. We have been assured that it will be possible for religious articles, like tefillin, to be brought into the Soviet Union in the near future. We were told that a new Russian-language siddur would finally be published after many decades. So they emphasized in what they conveyed to the public—the rabbis emphasized more of the positive elements that they could find.
One issue that they did not speak about at all, in the Journal-American articles or in general upon their return, was the issue of Soviet Jews wanting to leave the Soviet Union. Clearly, the Russian authorities did not want that message being broadcast to the world because that indicated significant dissatisfaction with life in the Soviet Union. So the most that Rabbi Schacter and his colleagues would say on the subject was that they hoped that Soviet Jews who had relatives in the United States would be allowed family reunification. That, of course, would have affected only a very small number of the three million Jews in Russia.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: The Journal-American went on to republish all of the articles in a booklet for distribution.
“This is the story for which the world has waited many years,” began the booklet’s forward. “A story that adds an illuminating chapter to the history of our times.
“It is the story of Russia’s three million Jews, virtually isolated from contact with their co-religionists in the outside world for four decades. It is the story of five American rabbis, who penetrated the Iron Curtain and brought about the first factual and comprehensive account of Russia’s ‘lost’ Jews and their heroic struggle to preserve their religious identity.”
Dr. Rafael Medoff: Herschel Schacter was a unique figure in that he had a foot in several camps. He had been an early activist with the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. He had been very much a part of the mainstream Jewish leadership as head of the American Jewish Conference for Soviet Jewry. He also had very close personal relationships with Haredi rabbis who were opposed to public protests. Nonetheless, Rabbi Schacter was effective in all the worlds in which he functioned. He was a bridge-builder. He saw himself as a bridge-builder, and there’s no doubt that he was. These were bridges that began with his experiences in Buchenwald in 1945, that continued with his unique experiences in the Soviet Union, visiting there in 1956, and eventually helped shape the important roles that he played as a national Jewish leader in later decades.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Upon concluding his chairmanship of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, Rabbi Schacter returned to his rabbinical life in the Bronx. In 1976, he became director of rabbinic services at Yeshiva University, where he spent the next decade guiding the next generation of rabbis. Upon the completion of his tenure at the university, he largely retired from public life, but continued to serve as a resource and mentor to rabbis around the country.
He passed away on March 21, 2013, at the age of 95.
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In the decades that followed the delegation’s visit, Soviet Jews struggled to leave the USSR, and conditions across the region worsened. Cold War tensions continued to build and by the mid-1960s, a grassroots movement among American Jews to secure the release of their Soviet counterparts began to grow.
Archival Audio – Rally for Soviet Jewry: Is it too much to ask if, American industry provides the technology and investments to develop Soviet natural resources, that Moscow provide the visas for the saving of human resources? Today. Today, 30 years after Buchenwald, Auschwitz, the Warsaw Ghetto? Is it too much to ask that this time we respond now instead of sending our regrets later?
Rebecca Naomi Jones: From the American Jewish Historical Society, I’m Rebecca Naomi Jones. This episode was written by executive director Gemma R. Birnbaum and co-produced by Shaul Kelner. Recording, sound design, and mixing were done at Sound Lounge. Transcription is provided by Adept Word Management. Archival material is courtesy of the collections of the American Jewish Historical Society and its Archive of the American Soviet Jewry Movement, British Pathé, and the AP Archive.
For episode transcripts, additional resources, and links to the collections featured in this episode, visit ajhs.org/podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on your preferred podcast platform which helps others discover our series.
