Many historians state that Hitler’s one time partner, Stalin, planned a major pogrom, perhaps another Holocaust, for 1953 in the USSR and also in its East and Central European colonies. The pretext was going to be the “proletariat” incensed by what they “learned” from the “Doctor’s Trial” – yet another Communist invented and instigated sinister purge of innocent people. Historians wrote that a document was prepared and signed by many Soviet “Jewish1” leaders, condemning the mostly Jewish “treacherous doctors” and appealing to Stalin to “save” the Jews from the “people’s fury”. Stalin was kindly going to “protect” the Jews by shipping them to temporary “safety” in what were in effect concentration camps. Many feel that the list of Jews with addresses, the buses, trains and gulags were readied. According to some opinions the “incensed proletariat” were going to “spontaneously” attack the transports on the way to the camps. Those who survived such pogroms were destined for the camps, where the elements, cruelty, malnutrition, diseases and the other deadly factors which decimated many of the unfortunates
In early 1953 Hungary's' Jewish and Zionist leadership was arrested and many if not all were cruelly tortured. A typical Communist show trial was planned where the accused “admit their guilt”. The methodology was simple: a script of accusations was written and the actors were tortured until they could appropriately play their parts in a showcase courtroom. The accusations weer “spying” for the “imperialists and Zionists” and against some also the “murder” of Raoul Wallenberg by the Jewish leaders in the US embassy basement in 1945.
The “Doctors' Trial”, the Budapest Jewish/Zionist show trial, and massive anti-Jewish planned actions were stopped after Stalin collapsed in his dacha on Purim 1953: on March 1.
It would be fitting to remember Purimfest 1953 during future Purim celebrations.
Some historians write that Stalin was also looking for a showdown with the West and may also have been trying to provoke a world war in 1953 to attempt to impose a Stalinist “Utopia” on the rest of the world.
Indeed, Purimfest 1953 is a source for joy to all people, not just to Jews.
Almost a half century ago Communist regimes in the USSR, its colonies and “affiliates” (e.g. mainland China) were exposed as Hell on Earth, torturing and murdering significantly more people than Hitler, Stalin’s one time partner and co-rapist of Poland. It is fascinating that even long after Stalin’s death and after exposure of Communism's long-term bloodthirsty democide there was a significant Communism centered secular religious cult in many places in the World, including the advanced and prosperous countries in free West. Even today many people around the world see Stalin and Communism in a positive light.
It is also interesting that whereas Nazi Germany was and is almost universally seen very negatively, the USSR and its colonies were perceived by some very positively, especially by liberal humanist intellectuals. It is puzzling that so many bright and often even idealist people couldn’t or wouldn’t see that despite rhetoric to the contrary Russia was THE imperialist and colonialist of the twentieth century, was a great abuser of human rights and immense threat to peace in the past century. One must question the motives and intellectual capabilities of “intellectuals” who saw Communism and the Soviet Union and its empire in a positive glow and who deified Stalin2 and other Communist leaders.
The widely enforced intolerance for independent thinking and enforced rigid pro-Soviet conformity of some intellectual circles in the free West is quite disconcerting. So is the hypocrisy of today’s “idealistic” and “revolutionary youth” violently protesting “globalism” and not even bothering to realize that the aggressive and blood-thirsty “globalist” of recent history was Communism - with the Internacionale anthem declaring the strategic revolutionary aim: establishing via global war an ultimate internationalized “red” world … Fortunately that nightmare did not turn into reality. Still, up until a few decades ago there was a real danger of much of the world being destroyed through violent Communist expansionism. Khruschev declared the Communist system’s strategic aim when he banged his shoes on the table at the New York UN headquarters screaming “We will bury you!”
The puzzles continue. How did humanist intellectuals dismiss the huge numbers of Communism’s victims (current estimate is 94 million globally – possibly much higher) with statements like “When you make an omelet you must break the egg” and “When you cut down the tree there is inevitably sawdust”. The fact that the humanist intellectuals could so easily dismiss the rivers of tears and blood on the altar of Communism is enlightening. Perhaps these are the true effects of persistent brain washing and extreme pressure to conform and the persistent danger facing intellectuals that their ideas and ideals may be disconnected from reality.
It is of interest to understand why intelligent people in the free West became Communist or viewed Communism in such a positive light. After all, they were not forcibly converted by Communist Crusades and Inquisitions, as were multitudes in the USSR and its colonies. Was it the madness of crowds, a typical consequence of intense group think, and skillful image making by the Communist dictatorships to make them look like Heaven on Earth whereas, in reality, they were Hell on Earth? Did people in the free West glimpse the horrible reality behind the lively songs of Communist dictatorships, or did their secular religious fervor and group identity in effect render them deaf, dumb and blind to reality? Did any of them realize that the red colored flag was an eloquent, crisp and fitting statement about the constant flow of blood required by the blood thirsty altar of the Communist Empire? What events made some ardent Communists “wake up” to reality and why were so many others unable to awaken? What is the fundamental difference between those who could wake up and the perpetual sleepwalkers? These questions beg for answers.
How is it that even after the tragedy of the Holocaust some political groups in Israel, in fact the country’s elite3, cancelled Purim celebrations on March 1, 1953 when Stalin collapsed and deep in mourning for the death of their pseudo-god flew the red flag at half mast when Stalin died? Did the leaders of such political movements understand and communicate to their movement’s membership the immensae number of victims of Communist dictatorship, the implications of the Prague Trials and, the Budapest show trial preparations and the “Doctors’ Plot”, to be followed by possible massive planned deportations and perhaps pogrom throughout the Soviet Empire? At a more basic level, how did the idealists in the free West, especially in Israel, cope with the fact that Stalin was Hitler’s ally with innumerable war crimes against Poles, the Baltic states, Ukrainians, Tatars, Cossaks, Russian, many other nationals and the huge number of women raped by the Red Army? It is hoped that these questions will one day be addressed with all the seriousness this requires.
It is somewhat difficult to peel away an aura of charisma from the Communist system and look at it objectively. After all, it stated objectives were Utopian, its red flag and songs were inspiring and parts of its written constitution seemed positive. The packaging was very skillfully designed and apparently the mind finds it difficult to look beyond that and see and smell the ugly and decaying reality within the nice illusion in which it is wrapped. It is an insult to Stalin’s memory that Goebbels is considered to have been the great propagandist of the twentieth century. Stalin was a far more skillful propagandist and marketeer, and that was only one of his skills. He was also an inspired script writer and director of a reality show played on the grand stage to be seen by the whole world. Stalin conceived, scripted and directed waves of interlocking purges and staged trials taking huge tolls - yet he was able to project toward Western Communists and many intellectuals a positive and even charismatic image.
Even cursory reading of the history of the Communist empire since the Bolshevik Revolution is overwhelming due to the magnitude of atrocities and the inability to perceive in human terms the immense suffering and murders. Who can really imagine and emotionally understand what it means that the Communist movement around the world had an estimated 94 million victims? Who can really understand all the suffering, degradation and huge loss of human potential due the gulags, prisons, torture and execution chambers which were the foundation stone of all Communist systems around the world?
Despite the many clear facts it is difficult to clearly see that the Nazi and Communist systems were mirror images of two sinister and destructive worlds. The packaging blinds the eye and dulls the mind. One’s mind oscillates between the facts clearly stating that the two systems were parallel universes and the contradictory illusion showing Nazism as evil and Communism in a positive light. The architects of the Communist system’s international public relations and marketing campaign did an excellent job and disrupted the minds of huge numbers of intellectuals and opinion shapers through the world.
Perhaps the primary conclusion is that we seem to lack the ability to juggle in our collective mind “complex reality”: to reconcile a beautifully wrapped package with the vile substance it contains, to be alert to danger signals indicating that a compelling “idealistic vision” is in fact a hallucination or nightmare, etc. Even after the vision shatters we don’t seem to engage in meaningful soul searching and have difficulty learning from our mistakes. Perhaps this is the reason why far too often we irresponsibly embark on half-baked “good ideas” turned into Ideology de Jour, which we force on our fellows without any analysis of potential consequences, open debate, graduated feasibility tests, independent auditors and other rational safeguards. In fact, calls for mindful analysis and insistence on safeguards are often perceived as “reactionary”, “Fascist” and “fundamentalist”. We seem to maintain a veryproblematic modus operandi. After “wonderful ideology” becomes obviously problematic we plunge with abandon into the next potentially destructive collective “good idea” and illusion. We seem to lack a collective immune system protecting us from the ravages of destructive and parasitic ideas masquerading in attractive packages. There is much to learn from the pharmaceutical industry – where new “good ideas” and “visions” in medicine can’t be so irresponsibly thrust on others.
Far too often “history” is presented as an accumulation of mindless dates and facts. Generally overlooked is the fact that perhaps the most important aspect of history is that it contains important patterns in time. Events of the past seem to exhibit generic patterns. “Patterns in time” can be powerful ways of viewing the past, and can probably also be used to better understand and possibly predict likely scenarios in the history of the future.
Even cursory reading of Communist history indicates that current situations often include repetition, variation, amplification/attenuation and fusion of previously observed patterns.
The most recent major parallel to Communism is Nazism and Fascism. They too had a world capital as center, derived from socialism, had at their helm an all powerful man with insatiable appetite for blood and world domination, who was intent on creating a new man and elimination of various types of people, and operated large numbers of concentration and death camps.
The Church in in the past is another parallel. It preached noble ideas and worship of a a man - much like Communism. For almost two millennia it too engaged in double-talk - preaching love and kindness, and in reality practiced large-scale torture and murder (e.g. Crusades, Inquisition, religious wars, Church instigated antisemitism). It too tortured and murdered “heretics”. Both religions had highly ritualized practices and revered icons (e.g. Communism’s images of past and current gods4 and saints5, the red flag, red star, hammer and sickle) and holy liturgy (e.g. Internacionale, Soviet anthem, songs abut Stalin, etc.). Communist systems world-wide had a god (usually Stalin, and Mao Tze Tung in Red China) and venerated prophets (e.g. Marx, Engels) and perceived great saints (e.g. Lenin). It too had a Vatican (Moscow), and holy works (Stalin’s works, Das Kapital).
Another parallel is the French Revolution. It too started with a noble slogan and executed the royal family. It too rapidly degenerated into an orgy of murder (under the guillotine). Its murder machinery too started consuming its own (e.g. Robespierre).
Probably there are many other historic parallels.
An unusual feature of the Holocaust was that in many cases it was possible to stand up to the evil of Nazism and save people. Among non-Jews there were many who hid Jews and courageous diplomats like Raoul Wallenberg, Carl Lutz, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Sugihara and Giorgio Perlasca6 who were able to save large numbers of Jews. There were also amazing “Jewish Wallenbergs” like Rabbi Michael Ber Weissmandl, Mrs. Gisi Fleischmann and others in the Bratislava “Working Group”, Hillel Kook and his group, George Mantello, Mrs. Recha Sternbuch, Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld and others who were able to rescue many. This phenomenon does not seem to have a parallel in the tragic history of the democide perpetrated by Communist regimes. It is important to try to understand the reasons for this disparity.
A fundamental and universal pattern in time is that once a powerfully marketed “meme”7 (mind virus) is disseminated it tends to take root in large numbers of minds, hops from mind to mind, often gets amplified in host minds and as any parasite seems to take it over. After a mind is colonized by a meme, the mind seems to develop a blind spot for key aspects of reality. Even if the mind perceives a dissonance between the idea with which it was infected and reality a variety of “workarounds” are invented to justify the dissonance. This way the mind can justify to itself continued belief in the idea, in spite of contrary evidence.
The notion of “Peace” is one such powerful idea. That nice word was often heard in the USSR and its colonies, stated in many languages, and was a permanent part of Communist propaganda. Stalin was a very astute propagandist and strategist (evil men are not necessarily stupid or unskilled). While the Communist system was preaching that it was seeking world peace it was murdering on an unprecedented scale and was possibly getting ready for a world war (Stalin may have felt the timing is right because he had a limited head start with the H-bomb). Who was portrayed as anti-Peace? The “Capitalist, Imperialist war-mongers and their Titoist and Zionist lackeys”. This type of double talk seemed to work well, and serves many current murderous dictators - perhaps the best known of whom is Arafat in the Middle-East, who was skillfully marketed as a Peace lover. The Nobel Peace Prize helped with this image making, but severely diminished the prize’s meaning and value. In parallel, propagandists keep painting Israel as aggressor, even as a Nazi state creating another “Auschwitz”. Facts are easily swept away by skillful propagandists. The large numbers of pro-Arafat “Peace supporters”, even in Israel, were not bothered by the propaganda clashing with reality - for example Arafat constantly sabotaging peace talks, preaching to Arab public the elimination of Israel vs. a workable settlement, or that he had a long record of brutality to his own people and was extremely corrupt. Such concerns apparently can’t counteract the fixation that “he is for Peace” and for “human rights” and the Israelis are “for War and Occupation”.
Communism as a secular religion had an amazingly fast growth rate, an even more spectacularly rapid decline and the number of victims is almost impossible to understand in human terms. It must be asked who was guilty. Murder was apparently not the isolated work of a few deranged individuals, but was widespread and was a permanent part of the Communist milieu - just as permafrost is an indivisible part of the Soviet Union’s northern region. Whereas there were many evil sadists and inhuman people in the Communist systems, there were also “normal” and even highly idealistic people who eventually bloodied their hands and were often, in turn, consumed by the permanent murder machine of the Soviet Union, its colonies and affiliates. It is almost certain that many of those who murdered their fellow men and women would have led normal lives, were they to live in different times and different cultures. It is certain that there was a widespread and sustained phenomenon of the “madness of crowds”, where enforced and unconstrained conformity, as in trances and certain extreme religious rites, swept into its murderous maelstrom huge numbers of people who became the regimes’ torturers and executioners.
This, however, does not excuse actions of the torturers and murderers. Knowing the difference between good and evil is an individual responsibility and even in an evil society one must choose good over evil, and be held accountable if that choice is not made. It is not an excuse to blame one’s evil actions on an evil milieu or an evil system.
Another question which must be asked is how an individual can protect himself from being swept away into an evil milieu or evil system. The teachings of the Rabbi from Kotsk, the “Kotsker”, come to mind. He taught that one must not only avoid imitating others, but must also avoid imitating oneself. He said that one must have one and only one unrelenting life-long adversary: and that adversary must be oneself. This is not a hate relationship, but actually a life-long inner friend, one who constantly forces self-examination, critical thinking, a necessary dose of doubt to be mixed with one’s firm beliefs. One’s inner friend-adversary is like an inner study hall in a yeshiva study hall, a Beith Ha Midrash (also called “A House of Questioning”). A person with a lively inner Beith Ha Midrash is immunized against the madness of crowds and is assured of being able to maintain his humanity even if immersed in an evil milieu. Perhaps that is one of the true meanings of Judaism’s fundamental concepts: man created in God’s image, Be Tzelem Elokim.
There were huge numbers of atrocities during World War II - including, but not restricted to the Shoah – for example the Katyn forest and subsequent massacre of close to twenty-two thousand Polish officers by the Russians. It was perfectly logical to expect that the mass murderers responsible for such monumental suffering be tried and punished and reparation be paid. Also, many Holocaust museums and Holocaust centers sprung up and “Holocaust Study” was made a mandatory part of the curriculum in many countries, yet there is a glaring void of museums and mandatory curricula modules showing the huge human tragedy resulting from Communism. This imbalance needs to be corrected.
It defies explanation how perpetrators of an even greater crime than the Holocaust were not fittingly punished, how the immense suffering due to that long term reign of terror is not given appropriate weight in terms of museums and research centers, and why it not an important part of curricula world-wide.
The thoughts in this note call for much collective soul searching.
1In many ways Stalin’s Jewish servants in the USSR and the colonies were non-Jewish Jews – long ago they converted to a cruel secular religion constantly demanding its human sacrifices. We, the Jewish people, have not done our chesbon nefesh (soul searching) to learn how Jews joined the various KGB-s in the Communist Empire, how Jews became willing servants and even leaders of evil regimes.
2He was, for example, called “The Sun of the World”, translated as “Shemesh Ha Olam” by Israel’s “Hashomer Hatzair” (Young Guard) and further “left” political movements
3e.g. Hashomer Ha Tzair (“Young Guard”)
4e.g. Stalin
5e.g. Marx, Engels, Lenin, saints local to each colony (e.g. Rákosi in Hungary)
6Giorgio (Jorje) Perlasca was indeed quite an unusual “diplomat”
7term coined by Prof. Dawson