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I finally got around to reading this brilliant essay & highly recommend others do the same. It’s about a very special section the Soviets created in 1918, made up entirely of Jews, to persecute other Jews—the Yevsektsiya. bit.ly/2mfMuwZ
Dara Horn writes that in Yevsektsiya’s brief and bloody lifespan, “one finds the origins of today’s supposedly novel concept: Jews who are of course not anti-Semitic (how could they be? they’re Jews!), but simply anti-Zionist.”
”In the course of not being anti-Semitic and being simply anti-Zionist, the Yevsektsiya managed to persecute, imprison, torture, and murder thousands of Jews, until their leaders were themselves purged.”
“The Yevs leaders were scrupulous about making sure that this deluge of enmity came exclusively from Jews so no one would mistake the new regime for an anti-Semitic one... This relentless campaign was entirely well intentioned, liberating the Jews from their own worst qualities.”
Of note is how each of these Yevsektsiya leaders ended up: “who by bullet, who by Siberian labor, who by torture, who by a prison hospital’s lack of insulin.”
Even of greater note is that a few short years after Yevs leaders met their ends from the power they served, Soviet Jews were once again clamoring for their culture, restoration of Hebrew, & connection with Eretz Israel. We can all draw our own conclusions from this story.
