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Itzik Feffer
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===Arrest and death=== In 1948, after the assassination of Mikhoels, Feffer, along with other JAC members, was arrested and accused of [[treason]]. Since Feffer had been an informer for the [[NKVD]] he reportedly hoped he would be treated differently and cooperated with the investigation, not only providing false information that would lead to the arrest and indictment of over a hundred people, but implicating himself.{{Ref|3}} Efforts were made abroad to save him. The American concert singer and actor [[Paul Robeson]] had met Feffer on 8 July 1943, in New York during a Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee event chaired by [[Albert Einstein]], one of the largest pro-Soviet rallies ever held in the United States. After the rally, Paul Robeson and his wife [[Eslanda Robeson]] befriended Feffer and Mikhoels. Six years later, in June 1949, during the 150th-anniversary celebration of the birth of [[Alexander Pushkin]], Robeson visited the Soviet Union to sing in concert. According to [[David Horowitz]] {{blockquote|In America, the question "What happened to Itzik Feffer?" entered the currency of political debate. There was talk in intellectual circles that Jews were being killed in a new Soviet purge and that Feffer was one of them. It was to quell such rumours that Robeson asked to see his old friend, but he was told by Soviet officials that he would have to wait. Eventually, he was informed that the poet was vacationing in the [[Crimea]] and would see him as soon as he returned. The reality was that Feffer had already been in prison for a half year, and his Soviet captors did not want to bring him to Robeson immediately because he had become emaciated from lack of food. While Robeson waited in Moscow, Stalin's police brought Feffer out of prison, put him the care of doctors, and began fattening him up for the interview. When he looked sufficiently healthy, he was brought to Moscow. The two men met in a room that was under secret surveillance. Feffer knew he could not speak freely. When Robeson asked how he was, he drew his finger nervously across his throat and motioned with his eyes and lips to his American comrade. ''They're going to kill us,'' he said. ''When you return to America you must speak out and save us.''<ref>David Horowitz, ''Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey'', page 74.</ref>}} During his concert in Tchaikovsky Hall on 14 June - which was broadcast across the entire country - Robeson publicly paid tribute to Feffer and the late Mikhoels, singing the [[Fareinigte Partizaner Organizacje|Vilna Partisan]] song "[[Zog Nit Keynmol]]" in both Russian and Yiddish.<ref>Duberman 352-354.[http://claudet.club.fr/GhettosCamps/Disques/Mitsui.html Paul Robeson Live Concert in Moscow at Tchaikovsky Hall] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081013042251/http://claudet.club.fr/GhettosCamps/Disques/Mitsui.html |date=2008-10-13 }}</ref> The song was met with a standing ovation from the hall.<ref>{{YouTube|jzPShrawxLc|Recording of Robeson}} Recordings of the concert survived, but Robeson's spoken words are lost. Robeson's son, [[Paul Robeson Jr.]], tells about this episode of his father's biography in the documentary film ''His Name was Robeson'' (1998) by [[Nikolay Milovidov]].</ref><ref>{{YouTube|elQ5CG-XkZw|''His Name was Robeson''}}</ref> Returning to the US, Robeson organized a letter in defense of Feffer, which was signed by writer [[Howard Fast]] and the then-chairman of the [[World Peace Council]], French physicist [[Frédéric Joliot-Curie]], among others. According to observers, Robeson's letter delayed Feffer's death by three years. In 1952, however, Feffer, along with other defendants, was tried at a closed trial of JAC members, ostensibly due to their support of the [[Jewish autonomy in Crimea|American-backed proposal]] to establish an autonomous region for Jews in the Crimea. Feffer realized during this trial, when the defendants pleaded not guilty and spoke about the methods by which the investigation was conducted, that he would not be spared, and retracted his testimony: <blockquote> Investigator Likhachev told me: "If we arrest you, then we will find the crime ... We will knock out everything we need from you." So it turned out. I am not a criminal, but being very intimidated, I gave fictitious testimony against myself and others. </blockquote> Feffer also expressed pride in his [[Jewish]] identity. The tribunal convicted him of giving "slanderous information about the situation of Jews in the USSR" to an American contact, as noted in a letter from Minister of State Security [[Semyon Ignatyev]] to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU [[Georgy Malenkov]] dated February 7, 1953. Feffer was executed on 12 August 1952 at the [[Lubyanka Building]]. Feffer was rehabilitated posthumously in 1955, after Stalin's death; a cenotaph for him was installed at the Moscow Nikolo-Arkhangelsk cemetery. His poems have been reprinted, both in Yiddish and in Russian translation.
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