Albert Einstein’s statement.
With the consolidation of the communist regime in Russia, the tendency to uproot Hebrew culture grew, the principle persecutors being the “Jewish Section” of the communist party(”Jewsektia”). Hebrew books and journals ceased to appear and their distribution was prevented ;an end was put to the teaching of Hebrew. Teachers and students who persisted in studying the language were pilloried and sentenced for “counter revolutionary” activities. A group of Hebrew writers, headed by Jacob Klatzkin, hoped that a protest by intellectuals who were not consider hostile to the Soviet regime, could impress the Russian authorities and influence them to put an end to these harsh measures.
Amongst the signatures of the protest, besides Albert Einstein, were the writers Selma Lagerlof, Thomas Mann, Stefan Zwieg, Franz Werfel and Arnold Zweig, the pianist Arthur Schnable, the painter Max Liebermann, and the French statesman Edouard Herriot.
"We, European intellectuals, friends and supporters of every means which could lead away from capitalist economic chaos and its catastrophes of bloody wars, desire by our signatures to make the Russian Government take note that, concerning the Hebrew language and its persecution, we can neither approve the stand of the “Jewish Section” nor understand why the Government should consider itself bound insolubly to this section of the communist party.
…The Jewish people cannot and will never renounce the revival of its great cultural legacy-one of the greatest languages- which has been given to Human Spirit imperishable values, and, further, continues to give them in the form of modern Hebrew poetry and philosophy."
(From the archives of Jacob Klatzkin)
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