To event "Purimfest 1953" home page
A Web Article:
During this month marking 50 years since the death of the
vicious tyrant Josef Stalin, theories again abound as to the cause of his
demise. The New York Times reported ten days ago on a new book, entitled
"Stalin's Last Crime," which brings new evidence to support an old
theory that Stalin was poisoned. Another new book, however, puts the likely
poisoning into historical perspective. Dr. Alex Rashin, author of
newly-published "Why Didn't Stalin Murder All the Jews?," notes that
Stalin collapsed into his fatal coma on March 1, 1953 - the holiday of Purim -
precisely as he was in the midst of planning to deport and/or annihilate 2-4
million Jews.
Rashin writes that Stalin's entire last murderous campaign, known as the
Doctors' Plot, "was directed against the Jews, Zionists, Israel, and 'their
American imperialist masters.' Zionism became one of Stalin's major avowed
enemies when, in 1947-49, he failed in his plans to make Israel one of his
puppets. Voluminous testimony reveals that in 1953 he had planned to deport and
annihilate 2 to 4 million Jews. The campaign ended upon Stalin's abrupt collapse
into a coma on March 1, 1953, and his death on March 5."
Dr. Rashin writes that Stalin's death "in itself [is] such a happy end to a
huge threat [that] deserves to be remembered and commemorated by all Jews."
In addition, however, he adds much evidence to suggest that Stalin’s collapse
on Purim was not just a coincidence: "It is often told that Stalin staged
his purges exploiting the same script repeatedly and borrowing scripts from
others. The biblical Book of Esther - the basis of Purim - can be looked upon as
an elaborate script for a purge" that Stalin tried, to a certain extent, to
follow. The Book of Esther recounts how King Ahasuerus of ancient Persia
approved his minister Haman's plan for the wholesale annihilation of the Jews,
but then turned around and killed his powerful deputy. Stalin's associates,
carefully tracking his twisted logic, realized that they themselves were next on
his hit-list, and, with nothing to lose, poisoned the murderous dictator.
"Stalin's poisoning," Rashin says, "is strongly indicated by
medical reports published in 1972 and 1992 [referring to] important hemorrhages
in the cardiac muscle, stomach and intestine - atypical for a heart attack, and
[to the fact that] Stalin vomited blood..."
According to long-standing Jewish tradition, any 'miraculous' deliverance of a Jewish community from disaster at the hands of Jew-haters should continue to be celebrated each year on the appropriate day. Such events, called 'Little Purim,' have been celebrated in many communities. In 1996, Dr. Rashin initiated the commemoration of a 'Little Purim' in honor of the deliverance of Russian Jewry from the hands of Stalin, and it has since been held in over 100 synagogues across the United States.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=40426
The Whole Megillah On Stalin’s Death
"Before the apparent effort by political rivals to poison Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yuschenko last fall, there may have been the Purim poisoning of Joseph Stalin ..."
"... Stalin, who caused the deaths of an estimated 20 million Soviet citizens during his bloody 30-year rule, was probably poisoned by a number of his henchmen, including KGB chief Lavrenti Beria and Stalin’s successors as dictator, Georgy Malenkov and Nikita Khruschev. They all may have feared that Stalin was about to have them arrested and shot. Malenkov and Khruschev had Beria shot several months later. ..."
www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=10661
Review of "Why
Didn't Stalin Murder All the Jews"
by Prof. David Kranzler
Read "Why Didn't Stalin Murder All the Jews" with great interest for a number of reasons.
First of all, it artfully blends views of the role and destiny of Soviet Jews at an extended family level with that of the top echelons of the Soviet power structure. Both feel authentic and is largely based on documented evidence.
The author's way of interspersing a thorough historical analysis with interviews with members of his own family provides extra dimension to the drama of the Soviet Jewry.
Second, I am impressed with the thorough attention to even minute details of the events that were intended to complete the Holocaust in 1953. The author is well justified in considering most of the reports and "documents" of the period as at least partial disinformation approved by the KGB. True to his scientific background, the author meticulously examines the evidence for contradictions or agreements between various accounts in an ingenious quest to distill the truth. His conclusions are either convincing or at least very plausible even when he touches upon the global goals of Stalin's last murderous campaign. Careful distinction throughout the book between facts and fact-based rational theories reinforces trustworthiness of the analysis and conclusions.
The third reason lies in the relation of the book to my studies of the failures of the American Jewry to do much to help European Jewry during the Holocaust. I found that the American secular Jewish majority for the most part reduced their Jewishness to some kind of a messianic vision. They would jump on a bandwagon promising an immediate realization of their messianic vision in Roosevelt's New Deal. Others had even more radical messianic visions in socialism or even Stalinism. The fulfillment of these visions was a higher priority than the rescue of European Jews. A similar, but an even more extreme form of such blindness afflicted the Soviet Jewry.
My final reason for liking the book is that the author, while not imposing it on the reader, does not shy away from the religious perspective of the dramatic events of 1953. Why did Stalin collapse into his fatal coma exactly on Purim of 1953, right before the beginning of the new Holocaust? The 800 years-old rabbinical tradition commands us to celebrate every miraculous deliverance of the Jews on the day it happened according to the Jewish calendar. Millions of Jews were delivered in 1953, and it happened exactly on Purim. So, let's do celebrate!
***
Dr. David Kranzler, is a historian and a retired professor at CUNY. He is the author of ten books on rescue during the Holocaust, including the two prize-winning, Japanese, Nazis and Jews, and The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz.
Click to read "Megillah Purim-Stalin"
in English
by Bella and Alexander Rashin
Click to read/download "Megillah Purim-Stalin"
in Russian (for A4 size paper)
by Bella and Alexander Rashin
Click to read/download "Megillah
Purim-Stalin"
in Russian (for Letter size paper)
by Bella and Alexander Rashin
To event "Purimfest 1953" home page
Mar 26, 2005 (was Mar 25, 2005)