Broken Heart / Broken Wholeness: The Post-Holocaust Plea for Jewish Reconstruction of the Soviet Yiddish Writer Der Nister(Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy)

In the summer of 1947, three years before his death in a labor camp hospital, one of the most significant Soviet Yiddish writers Der Nister (Pinkhas Kahanovitsh, 1884-1950) made a trip from Moscow to Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Russian Far East. He traveled there on a special migrant train, together with a thousand Holocaust survivors. The present study examines this journey as an original protest against the conformism of the majority of Soviet Jewish activists. In his travel notes, Der Nister described the train as the ""modern Noah's ark,"" heading ""to put an end to the historical silliness"". This rhetoric paraphrasing Nietzsche's ""historical sickness"", challenged the Jewish history in the Diaspora, which broke the people's mythical wholeness. Der Nister formulated his vision of a post-Holocaust Jewish reconstruction more clearly in his previously unknown manifesto. Without their own territory, he wrote, the Jews were like ""a soul without a body or a body without a soul, and in either case, always a cripple"". Records of the fabricated investigation case against the anti-Soviet nationalist grouping in Birobidzhan reveal details about Der Nister's thoughts and real acts. Both the records and the manifesto are being published here for the first time.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Zvi Gitelman Note on the Translation and Transliteration Acronyms and Abbreviation Preface Part One: DER NISTER’S JOURNEY FROM MOSCOW TO BIROBIDZHAN A Wedding on a Migrant Train Der Nister’s Images and Impressions “With the Second Echelon” “With the New Settlers to Birobidzhan” A Man Dieth in a Tent Russian-Jewish “Hybridization” Comfort Ye My People Real Action Part Two: INVESTIGATION CASE NO. 68 Der Nister Affair Accused in the Case Detention Order: BUZI MILLER, June 6, 1949, Birobidzhan Interrogation Records Defendant HESHL RABINKOV, July 23, 1949, Khabarovsk Defendant BUZI MILLER, August 5, 1949, Khabarovsk Defendant BUZI MILLER, August 29, 1949, Khabarovsk Defendant BUZI MILLER, September 17, 1949, Khabarovsk Defendant ITSIK FEFER, June 30, 1949, Moscow Defendant BUZI MILLER, October 1949, Khabarovsk Defendant BUZI MILLER and Defendant HESHL RABINKOV, October 28, 1949, Khabarovsk (Confrontation) Defendant LUBA VASSERMAN, July 12, 1949, Khabarovsk Arrestee GRIGORI FRID, April 4, 1938, Minsk (Testimony) Defendant LUBA VASSERMAN, August 17, 1949, Khabarovsk Defendant SHIMEN SINIAVSKI-SINDELEVICH, October 25, 1949, Khabarovsk Defendant FAIVISH ARONES, November 21, 1949, Khabarovsk Defendant FAIVISH ARONES, November [22–29?], 1949, Khabarovsk Defendant FAIVISH ARONES and Witness ALEKSANDR DRISIN, November 29, 1949, Khabarovsk (Confrontation) Resubmission of the Indictment: Defendant BUZI MILLER, December 15, 1949, Khabarovsk Bill of Indictment: BUZI MILLER, HESHL RABINKOV, ISROEL EMIOT, BER SLUTSKI, LUBA VASSERMAN, SHIMEN SINIAVSKI-SINDELEVICH, and FAIVISH ARONES, April 6, 1950, Khabarovsk (Excerpts) The Sentence: BUZI MILLER, May 31, 1950, Moscow (Excerpt) Resolution to Reduce the Prison Term and Release BUZI MILLER from Custody, December 27, 1955, Moscow (Excerpt) Appendix: Der Nister’s “Birobidzhan Manifesto” (Yiddish) Bibliography Index of Names and Places