The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee

The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAFC), established in the early phase of the Soviet-Nazi war as a propaganda unit, gradually developed links with foreign Jewish organizations and began to act as a body taking responsibility for Soviet Jewish citizens' interests. The turning point in the JAFC's destiny was the 1943 trip of its top representatives, Solomon Mikhoels and Itsik Fefer, to the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Britain. The success of their tour had encouraged the committee to extend the areas of its activity and, at the same time, had drawn a more attantive gaze of the Soviet secret police. In 1948, the decision came to close the JAFC and, concurrently or later, virtually the entire infrastructure of Jewish cultural life in the Soviet Union. In 1952, a group of Jewish intellectuals faced a secret trial, whose minutes are analyzed in the special section of East European Jewish Affairs. This article provides an introduction to the analysis presented in this special section.