The Jewish Antifascist Committee and its Foreign Delegation

During World War II, Stalin’s ideologists decided to form a new organization called the Jewish Antifascist Committee (JAC), which became a structural unit of the Soviet Information Bureau, or Sovinformburo. The JAC published the newspaper Eynikayt and had contacts with foreign Jewish organizations. In 1943, the leading members of the JAC, Solomon Mikhoels and Itsik Fefer, visited the USA, Canada, Mexico, and England. This lecture concentrated on the events around Mikhoels and Fefer's American sojourn.

About the Speaker

Gennady Estraikh is Associate Professor of Yiddish Studies at the NYU's Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. In 1988-91 he worked as Managing Editor of the Moscow Yiddish journal Sovetish Heymland. Later he moved to England, where he studied and worked at the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies and the School of Oriental and African Studies. His most recent monograph is Yiddish in the Cold War (2008). He writes a weekly column for the Forverts.