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Act V liMy people will be reborn here again!" (1944-47) Jews from Poland and Jews from far off Birobidzhan draw from one and the same life spring-the great victory ... over German fascism. - Shloime Lastik, from the review The People of Israel Lives: Ikh leb and Ufshtand in geto In April 1943 Aleksandr Bakhmutski was appointed First Secretary of the Jewish Autonomous Region Party Regional Committee. Bakhmutski was a rapidly advancing party regular from an assimilated Jewish family who had never before been involved in so called "Jewish work." In just a few years he had moved with dizzying rapidity from being a simple metalworker at the "Serp i molot" (Hammer and Sickle) factory in Moscow to being the Head of the First Department of the RSFSR People's Commissariat of Municipal Economy . He was transferred to Birobidzhan from the post of Deputy Chairman of the Khabarovsk Territorial Executive Committee. At about this time the Soviet armies began their victorious advances in the West, and gradually the terrible picture of the systematic destruction of Eastern European Jewry was revealed to the world. Against this background Bakhmutski was destined to playa central role in the next "revival" of Birobidzhan. In May 1944 the Jewish Autonomous Region marked its tenth anniversary . For the first time in a number of years extensive celebrations were organized , and numerous guests came to attend them. The Regional Executive Committee held a festive meeting, the public met with the original newcomer settlers, jubilee assemblies were held on the collective farms and in the factories , jubilee photo exhibitions were organized, and so on. The idea of "Jewish statehood" once again began to be raised in Birobidzhan; the question of transforming the region into an autonomous republic was again put on the agenda1 As on previous anniversaries, many of the congratulatory telegrams received were full of pathos. "Destroyers have eternally persecuted the Jewish people during its many centuries-long history, from the Egyptian pharaohs to the Maccabees, to the pogromchiks of the Spanish Inquisition and the Hitlerite cannibals. Only in the Soviet land have we acquired a homeland, freedom, 1 GAEAO f. 1-P, op. 1, d. 432, 1. 60. 190 IN SEARCH OF MILK AND HONEY immortality. Our homeland is immortal, our people [is immortal].,,2 The Birobidzhan project became again the legitimate heir of Jewish history. By the time the anniversary celebrations began the regional leadership had gathered the signatures of 70,142 local residents on an unprecedented letter to Stalin. The regional officials had decided to use the occasion of the anniversary to remind the "leader" about the region's existence and about the project to create a Jewish state structure, which had undeservedly been forgotten. The Jewish popular masses ... have become rooted to the Russian land with their hearts.. .. The great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem has depicted this touching attachment truly and vividly in the deeply folk figure of Tevye the Dairyman.... Just at the time when the rebirth of our people was crowned, in the land of socialism, with the creation of a Jewish state formation, Hitlerite Germany proclaimed and began to realize its "state doctrine" of physically destroying the Jews, of completely exterminating one of the oldest peoples in the world.... Chop off the hands of the executioners who torture and torment us, smash the mug of the monster who sneers at our suffering! An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth! Blood for blood, death for death! ... The fighting spirit of our ancestors, steadfast and terrible in their hatred of the enemy, returns to life in tl1e fighting deeds of the Jews, Heroes of the Soviet Union. Like Samson in the biblical story, the Komsomol member Lazar Papernik accomplished a great feat of self-sacrifice.... The lion's heart of the Maccabees, knowing no fear in battle, beats in the breast of those who are now the beauty and pride of our people .. 3 The vivid manner of expression of this letter is very noteworthy. Declaring the indissoluble link between tl1e Jewish people and the Russian land, the authors at the same time emphasize the importance of the existence of a Jewish state structure in Birobidzhan as an antithesis to the Hitlerite genocide. The numerous biblical associations served to emphasize the community of Jewish and Soviet interests in the war with Nazism. The Jewish heroes personally revive the fighting spirit of their ancestors, while the leadership of the country is called upon to take revenge for all the Jewish...

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