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<\/a><\/p>\nLetter from Asya Verzhbolovskaia, RG 270, Folder U-V, Union of Russian Jews. Collection of YIVO Archives.<\/p>\n
Asya\u2019s letter to Bertha arrived not in its original Soviet-stamped envelope but on a sturdy sheet translated to English by the Union of Russian Jews.\u00a0 Founded in Berlin as a fraternal organization of liberal Jewish intellectuals fleeing the Russian Revolution, after the rise of Nazism its members eventually relocated to New York.\u00a0 There, the Union of Russian Jews became a formal organization and rededicated itself to educational programming and charity.\u00a0 But as the tides of war turned in the Allies\u2019 favor, the group made an unexpected connection in the Soviet Union: the president of the Moscow Jewish Community.<\/p>\n
Thus began the coordinated effort between the Union of Russian Jews in New York City and the President of the Moscow Jewish Community, Samuel Chobrutsky in Tashkent\u2014the site to which many non-military Soviet citizens evacuated during the war.\u00a0 These organizations sought to reconnect Jews in Soviet territory with kin who immigrated to the United States, Palestine, and South America in prior decades. \u00a0This program was part of Western Europe\u2019s and the USSR\u2019s embrace of family reunification as a form of post-war reconstruction.\u00a0 From a Soviet perspective, reunited families promised to boost the USSR\u2019s birth rate, which the state considered crucial after the loss of over 20 million Soviet citizens in the war.\u00a0 Chobrutsky\u2019s and the Union of Russian Jews\u2019 intentions were different.\u00a0 Likely with the USSR\u2019s emigration and the United States\u2019 immigration restrictions in mind, they resolved to emotionally and economically, as opposed to physically, reunite families.\u00a0 Restored contact with relatives in the West could ease the loneliness and destitution facing Jewish survivors.\u00a0 Indeed, before Soviet forces even entered Berlin, the union boasted the reunion\u2014via post or telegram\u2014of over 6000-7000 families.<\/p>\n This extensive exchange of letters reflects the impressive organization of and link between two associations\u2014both led by ethnic minorities in their respective states\u2014based in empires already frigidly antagonistic towards one another. \u00a0Moreover, scholars have long rued the Great Terror\u2019s moratorium on Soviet citizens\u2019 ability to communicate with the outside world and its rollover effect on national minorities\u2014such as Jews\u2014in the immediate post-war era.\u00a0 These letters reveal how throughout the war and immediate postwar era these restrictions were not all encompassing.\u00a0 The Soviet state allowed for a Jewish-specific bureau that located and connected family members abroad.\u00a0 In turn, Soviet Jewish clients displayed an intimate familiarity with the far-ranging familial networks they might have across the globe.\u00a0 They desperately described themselves \u201cas the nieces of [your] sister\u201d or \u201c[your aunt], daughter of Iosif of Proskurov.\u201d \u00a0They searched for a \u201csister in Boston\u201d or a \u201ccousin in Montreal\u201d\u00a0 In her aforementioned 1946 letter, Asya listed five relatives that the organization could potentially to trace for her.\u00a0 Almost every single letter writer identifies themselves as the last surviving adult member of a decimated Jewish family and suggests that kin in the United States, Palestine, or South America represents their last remaining support network.\u00a0 In 1947, Ruhel Shinder-Vainer informed her brother that \u201cGermans killed our entire family\u201d leaving Ruhel and her young daughter alone.\u00a0 She revealed than she no longer lived in Illintsi, Ukraine\u2014a town where the majority Jewish population was almost entirely murdered\u2014and had moved to Tulchin, a larger city in the region.\u00a0 She unloaded her loneliness, inability to sustain herself and her daughter, and her displacement.\u00a0 Relatives who received these desperate missives from family members were directly encouraged by the Union of Russian Jews to offer material and emotional support. The organization urged relatives to send the Union of Russian Jews\u2019 pre-assembled food packages. Costing between $7 and $9 these packages included both essentials and quintessentially American products, ranging from powdered milk to macaroni, Mazola oil to Lipton tea. \u00a0The exchange between participating Soviet Jews and their family members abroad was emotional and material.<\/p>\n As the thinly veiled antisemitism of Stalin\u2019s \u201canti-cosmopolitan\u201d campaigns impeded Soviet citizens\u2019\u2014and particularly Jews\u2019\u2014communication with the outside world, the Union of Russian Jews found its letters go increasingly unanswered.\u00a0 However, even into 1950 the organization boasted contact with Soviet Jewish families\u2014though letters in the collection rarely date later than 1949.\u00a0 The program\u2019s link to the USSR disappeared shortly after, but not before it had successfully reunited 15,000 families.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Related materials:<\/p>\n
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