“It seemed to me that I could smell the fumes and the fire.”
by
![David Bergelson with son Lev. By user:Elisheva Kitrossky - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33572590 [Cropped]](https://www.israpundit.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-16-021947-300x215.png)
David Bergelson with son Lev. By user:Elisheva Kitrossky – Own work, CC BY 3.0, Wikipedia [Cropped]
“There is a day that falls in August when the Temple of Solomon was burned,” David Bergelson told a Soviet tribunal. “On this day all Jews fast for twenty-four hours, even the children. They go to the cemetery for an entire day and pray there ‘together with the dead.’ I was so immersed in that atmosphere of that temple being burned—people talked about it a great deal in the community—that when I was six or seven years old it seemed to me that I could smell the fumes and the fire.”
The writer had bungled the date of Tisha Ba’av or the Fast of the Ninth of Av which in 1952 had instead come in late July, but he was right to smell ‘the fumes and the fires’ since his three year ordeal of torture and interrogations would soon end with a bullet to the head in the cellars of the KGB’s Lubyanka fortress on an August evening known as The Night of the Murdered Poets.
By then there were other ‘fumes and fires’ from the mass burning of Yiddish books at the Sholom Aleichem Library in Birobidzhan: once the center of the hopes of Jewish Communists like Bergelson for creating a ‘Jewish’ culture that would replace Judaism with Communism, replace the Bible with Das Kapital, and would jettison Hebrew and replace it with Yiddish
“As a Jew, I feel more intensely in Birobidzhan,” Bergelson had argued less than two decades before his murder. “In Birobidzhan I will help build a glorious Jewish culture, socialist in form and national in content, which can serve propaganda purposes… I wish to partake of those fascinating, delectable juices of life that our Soviet regime bestows upon me.”
On The Night of the Murdered Poets, the Soviet regime withdrew the “delectable juices of life” from Bergelson and the other victims of the massacre as it had from millions of others.
Some of those Jewish writers, poets and doctors killed on The Night of the Murdered Poets had at least questioned the regime, with Peretz Markish warning that “the time will come that the snake wrapped around our necks will choke us”, but Bergelson appeared to have remained a loyal Communist and for his devout allegiance, his support for the previous Stalinist purges of Jewish figures, Bergelson was taken away, beaten and forced to confess to the worst crime.
Zionism.
The story of Bergelson and the cohort of ‘Yiddishist’ pied pipers is once again relevant as anti-Israel groups propose to follow in the footsteps of the ‘Bundists’, who ended up serving as the ‘Yevsektisa’, the brutal ‘Jewish Section’ of the Bolsheviks, targeting synagogues and rabbis, before, like Bergelson, being killed off by Stalin, now circulating around ‘Jewish Currents’, the online Beinart site that revives the old Communist newspaper Morgen Frayhayt, which was boycotted by most Jews for its support for Muslim massacres of Jews and the Hitler-Stalin Pact.
The media recently took to touting a book by ‘Molly Crabapple’, aka Jennifer Caban, the daughter of a Puerto Rican father arguing for a revival of the Socialist ‘Bund’ movement as the alternative to Israel through a “radical vision of solidarity.” Calls for ‘solidarity’, by which the anti-Israel Left mean Jews allying with Communists, racist identity politics groups and Islamists to destroy Israel and America, are the Left’s solution to antisemitism.
Anti-Israel activists, some Jewish and some not, dig up Jewish ancestors, real or imagined, stumble through some awkward phrases in Yiddish and call for the destruction of Israel.
‘Solidarity’ with antisemites around a common hatred of traditional Jews never works out.
After having championed a ban on Hebrew, shut down synagogues, murdered countless Jews for the crimes of ‘Judaism’ and ‘Zionism’, the Yevsektsia and the Yiddishists were themselves purged in the 1930s, followed by growing crackdowns on Yiddish literature, and any Jewish Communists in America who could swallow the idea that their old friends had really been spies and terrorists, soon had to also swallow the alliance between Nazism and the USSR.
“How much pain and strain were required in the last ten years to maintain at least a shred of faith that everything going on in Moscow meant redemption,” Menahem Boraisha, a Yiddish poet who had left the Morgen Frayhayt, the Communist paper that had helped lure Bergelson and many others to their doom, when it cheered on the Muslim massacre of Jews in Hebron. “Iron dictatorship, concentration camps… socialists labored to find a vindication for all this, stifling their own conscience, explaining away through rationalization and casuistry, and with tooth and nail clinging to one consolation… still, Socialism is being built there.”
By then, anyone with a fraction of humanity in his soul, who had been misled by ideological enthusiasm, had left the Morgen Frayhayt, leaving behind only complete monsters. Jewish newspaper sellers refused to sell the paper. Members of its staff were threatened in the street.
After a brief pause, when the Hitler-Stalin pact collapsed with the Nazi surprise attack, the USSR resumed its crackdown on the Jews culminating in the Doctors Plot and the larger plan to exterminate the Jews of the USSR of which The Night of the Murdered Poets was only one minor incident, but which mostly came to an end with Stalin’s nearly miraculous death.
The Birobidzhan delusion never gained much of a Jewish population and existed only as a kind of ‘Anti-Israel’ for Jewish Communists to build a cultural house of cards around. The actual Israel became a primary target of the Soviet Union and its allies, who helped create modern Islamic terrorism, the practice of airline hijacking, and also invented the ‘Palestinian’ cause.
That’s the manufactured cause in whose name modern anti-Israel activists of Jewish ethnic origin want to destroy Israel.
The old joke about the Communist experiment is that no amount of failures are ever enough. Next time, it’ll be managed the right way. Jewish Communists have learned nothing from the fate of their forebears which is a shame because if David Bergelson died for anything, it was that. It is hard to know what was in the Communist’s mind when he invoked the fall of the Temple at his trial as a self-indictment, but it is easier to guess the meaning of his last words.
“Earth, oh earth, do not cover my blood!” The quote did not come from Marx or Lenin, it was not the hideous slogan, “Long live Stalin” adopted by loyal Communists being put to death, but came from Job 16:18. It was not as transcendent a moment as the death of Dovid Hofshteyn that same night, a talented poet and reluctant Communist, who underwent a religious revival in captivity, reciting the psalms from memory in his cell and going to his death joyfully singing.
But it was a powerful statement that should resonate with the Jewish anti-Israel Left.
In 1926, Bergelson had expressed his repentance for opposing the ‘Yevsektisa’ and its crackdown on Hebrew and Judaism, claiming that “I have fairly deserved my exile, and I am suffering now for misunderstanding the difficulties with which the Yevseks had to contend at the period I opposed them.” The letter was printed in Der Emes: whose editor would also be killed.
Facing death, Bergelson’s last words were Jewish religious ones, a quote from the Bible so reviled by the Communists he had belonged to, and a call that his murder be remembered. Today, it is not the earth that covers his blood, but those who claim to follow in his footsteps, who fantasize about reconciling the irreconcilable paradox of Jewish identity and Communism.
That act of treason can only end in murder and death today as it did in the USSR.
Bergelson began verse 18 of Job 16. He never reached Verse 19: “Even now, behold my Witness is in heaven and He Who testifies for me is on high.”
For now, if there is any testimony of the consequences of the evil road he followed and that the anti-Zionist radical movement wants to follow again, it will have to be here on earth.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BhzQ5N6ox/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Spoiler alert: The DSA is taking over the Dems and Israel is a stand-in for America.
My comment: I don’t think that’s all of it. Antisemitism is a real phenomenon, like a virus. Or as the Pesach haggadah says: “In every generation , they rise up to destroy us.” And it periodically goes into remission, just like a virus.
But, many years ago, when a drunken Palestinianist student at the Union Theological Seminary from New Zealand chased me Toast, around a restaurant in the Columbia University area, it was,”Americans ought to be gassed” he shouted at me over and over, clearly conflating Americans with Jews (in a room, presumably full of Americans, including my date, with whom I had been having a terrific conversation, not about politics. She presumably made herself scarce. Never saw her again.)
But, I noticed that non-Jews openly began targeting me as a Jew, in so many words, in the late ‘90s, once in the ‘’80s, just based on my inherited appearance, presumably, though I am assimilated, initially in a mock friendly way most of the time, randomly starting conversations intended to turn me against Israel, or other groups of Jews, usually.
Or, against the idea that Jews exist and are a people, like the elderly Eastern European waiter at the Plaza Hotel, where I was playing a wedding. who came up to me, trying to persuade me that Jews were really Kazars and he couldn’t be an antisemite because Arthur Koestler agreed with him and besides his wife was Jewish. Or the time, an old man interrupted me when I was reading over s cup of coffee at the counter at the Donut Hub on West 14th St. (still there, been around for over 60 years) to harangue me about Kastner and the trial in Israel in the ‘50s. Of course, their was the time that the female Italian Anarchist roommate I had in the ‘80s who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand why I didn’t lower her share of the rent when a new room-mate moved in when I hadn’t raised it when the last one moved out, exclaimed,”You are a Jew, aren’t you?” Who was it who quipped, “No good deed goes unpunished*?” 😀
And as I commented further down in my comments in this thread, when I was myself a radical leftist, what feels like another lifetime ago, it was explained to me that it was creating an impassible dividing line between reformists and revolutionaries that was the whole point of
focusing on the Palestinian issue.
Still worth watching. I didn’t know Nancy Pelosi was one of the reps who voted against Israel.
But, it’s clear why the DSA and their opportunistic sycophants target Israel and sympathize with jihadists. Their secular version of “Big Satan, Little Satan,” neatly overlaps.
-*
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BhzQ5N6ox/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Spoiler alert: The DSS is taking over the Dems and Israel is a stand-in for America.
My comment: I don’t think that’s all of it. Antisemitism is a real phenomenon, like a virus. Or as the Pesach haggadah says: “In every gener, they rise up to destroy us.
But, many years ago, when a drunken Palestinianist student at the Union Theological Seminary from New Zealand chased me around a restaurant in the Columbia University area, it was,”Americans ought to be gassed” he shouted at me over and over, clearly conflating Americans with Jews.
And as I commented further down in my comments in my thread, when I was mysell a radical leftist, what feels like another lifetime ago, it was explained to me that creating an impassible dividing line between reformists and revolutionaries that was the whole point of
focusing on the Palestinian issue.
Still worth watching. I didn’t know Nancy Pelosi was one of the reps who voted for Massie’s bill to cut off aid to Israel. But not Jordan, interstingly enough.
You can see why the radical socialists of rhe DSA and their opportunistic sycophants sympathize with the jihadists.
They have their own secular version of “Big Satan, Little Satan.”
@ Peloni Post went poof! (Algorithm won’t allow same phrase. 😀 )
No problem, it is back now.
@Sebastien,
It’s back. Thanks
There were a lot of indigestible and undigested things, big and little, that didn’t add up that began to accumulate in the back of my mind in the 20 year period leading up to my “Great Awakening” in 2000.
I remember being told by a Greek Communist friend that all the stories about antisemitism in the Communist countries I heard when I was a kid were made up by the CIA and that they only allowed fascists to come over here. And I bought it. But then,
One of the little things was this: Back in the ’90s, I was working as a ringer in a semi-professional community orchestra with a lot of elderly Russian musicians who had come here to the U.S. after the fall of the Soviet Union, most of whom were Jewish or part-Jewish, and who had told me stories of the discrimination they had faced and didn’t want their children and grandchildren to face though they had liked the economic safety nets in the USSR (so, not fascist, cross that off the list).
One time, on a break, I remember recounting some of the awful medical malpractice experiences I and other members of my family had experienced, and I exclaimed, “I hate doctors!”
There was a sudden silence in that noisy room. You could have heard a pin drop. And then the noisy conversations resumed.
I’ve actually recounted this to people who didn’t get this, amazingly.
I really sound like I was a gullible idiot, don’t I? I sound that way to myself. A lot of people out there like I was, young and not so young.
What is to be done?* 😀
—
Incidentally, I was emphasizing the political power of novels in an earlier post, especially, Ahavat Zion, which it turns out is also also available on Amazon and Koren books in English, and there’s a free streaming audiobook version online in Hebrew, part two of which is on Youtube, but “What is to be done” was the title of a novel by Chernyshevsky which inspired the Nihilist movement in Russia which was an early predecessor of the Bolsheviks and had an enormous influence.
@Peloni Post disappeared
There were a lot of indigestible and undigested things, big and little, that didn’t add up that began to accumulate in the back of my mind in the 20 year period leading up to my “Great Awakening” in 2000.
I remember being told by a Greek Communist friend that all the stories about antisemitism in the Communist countries I heard when I was a kid were made up by the CIA and that they only allowed fascists to come over here. And I bought it. But then,
One of the little things was this: Back in the ’90s, I was working as a ringer in a semi-professional community orchestra with a lot of elderly Russian musicians who had come here to the U.S. after the fall of the Soviet Union, most of whom were Jewish or part-Jewish, and who had told me stories of the discrimination they had faced and didn’t want their children and grandchildren to face though they had liked the economic safety nets in the USSR (so, not fascist, cross that off the list).
One time, on a break, I remember recounting some of the awful medical malpractice experiences I and other members of my family had experienced, and I exclaimed, “I hate doctors!”
There was a sudden silence in that noisy room. You could have heard a pin drop. And then the noisy conversations resumed.
I’ve actually recounted this to people who didn’t get this, amazingly.
I really sound like I was a gullible idiot, don’t I? I sound that way to myself. A lot of people out there like I was, young and not so young. Though, to be fair, the belief that “the bourgeoisie media” was corrupted and not to be trusted was such that information was imparted: “I have a friend who said…” You know, a friend in the know. Anonymous, like David Steinberg’s Coast or
all the anonymous sources that get cited all the time.
I had another argument with another friend, an elderly Jewish-American socialist who said she performed in Israel in 1967, who angrily parroted Hillary Clinton’s blood libel that Israel was turning into a Jewish Iran because Buses were gende- segregated because she had a “friend” who visited Israel and wrote her a letter.
What is to be done?* 😀
—
Incidentally, I was emphasizing the political power of novels in an earlier post, especially, Ahavat Zion, which it turns out is also also available on Amazon and Koren books in English, and there’s a free streaming audiobook version online in Hebrew, part two of which is on Youtube, but “What is to be done” was the title of a novel by Chernyshevsky which inspired the Nihilist movement in Russia which was an early predecessor of the Bolsheviks and had an enormous influence.
When I became an Anarchist-Communist through reading when I was in my late teens in the late ‘70s, I also, was inspired by Chernyshevsky’s 1863 novel, “What is to be done” so I sported blue grannie glasses. So, i just now thought to ask:
“blue grannie glasses nihilists chernyshevsky hippies any connection?”
”Yes, there is a direct, fascinating historical connection. The line from 1860s Russian Nihilists to 1960s American Hippies runs straight through Nikolai Chernyshevsky and a specific pair of blue-tinted spectacles. [1]
The exact evolution of this counterculture thread unfolds across a century of rebellion:
1. The 1860s Russian Nihilist Uniform
In 1860s Russia, young radicals rejected traditional czarist society, church authority, and bourgeois aesthetics. They adopted a distinct “anti-fashion” uniform to recognize one another and shock the establishment.
* The Men: Wore rough wool cloaks, grew their hair long and unkempt, and grew scraggly beards.
* The Women (Nihilistki): Cut their hair into short bobs, wore plain dark dresses without crinolines, and rejected corsets.
* The Blue Glasses: Crucially, both male and female nihilists wore round, blue-tinted spectacles. In the 19th century, tinted lenses were marketed as medical protection against sunlight or for the visually impaired. Nihilists adopted them as a badge of “scientific objectivity” and cold intellectual detachment. It also allowed them to aggressively stare down authority figures without breaking eye contact. [1, 2, 3]
2. Nikolai Chernyshevsky and What Is to Be Done?
Nikolai Chernyshevsky was the ideological godfather of this movement. In 1863, while imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, he wrote the radical utopian novel What Is to Be Done?
* The book became the ultimate manual for the Nihilist lifestyle. It described “New People” who lived in egalitarian communes, practiced free love, and pursued rational self-interest.
* Ironically, Vladimir Nabokov famously noted in his novel The Gift that while the myopic Chernyshevsky himself did not wear the iconic blue spectacles, his fanatical disciples wore them universally to mimic a “scientific” look. [1]
3. The Leap to the 1960s Hippies
A century later, the American counterculture adopted almost the exact same aesthetic and philosophical blueprint:
* The Look: The round, wire-rimmed, blue-tinted glasses re-emerged in ?San Francisco as “grannie glasses” or “John Lennon glasses.” Paired with long, unkempt hair and fringe cloaks, the visual overlap with 1860s St. Petersburg radicals was stunningly precise.
* The Philosophy: The Hippie movement mirrored the Nihilist rejection of bourgeois materialist values, traditional marriage, and state authority. Both movements championed communal living, sexual liberation, and alternative cooperative economies.
When the 1960s youth culture put on their blue grannie glasses, they were unknowingly resurrecting the exact visual signature of Chernyshevsky’s 19th-century “New People.”
If you want to dive deeper into this counterculture lineage, let me know if you would like to explore:
* How Vladimir Lenin was heavily influenced by Chernyshevsky’s book
* The literary backlash to the blue-glass nihilists by writers like Turgenev and Dostoevsky
* Other Victorian fashion trends that were co-opted by political radicals”
I remember being told by a friend and comrade who influenced my thinking enormously early on that this was the entire point of focusing on the “Palestinian” issue.
Though since then, the liberals and progressives, and for that matter, nearly all of the radical socialists**, have been completely coopted like the Borg* Now the tail is wagging the dog.
* borg star trek”
“Core Attributes
* The Hive Mind: Drones lack individual thoughts, linked via a collective consciousness.
* Forcible Assimilation: They inject nanoprobes to turn sentient beings into drones.
* Pursuit of Perfection: They conquer civilizations to absorb tech and unique knowledge.
* Famous Catchphrase: “Resistance is futile,” warning targets that adaptation is impossible.[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]…”
Which kind of serves as an apt metaphor for the history of Islam, as well, does it not?
** Interestingly enough, the original Trotskyist newspaper, a complete outlier, which is still around, is staunchly pro-Israel.
* borg star trek”
“Core Attributes?* The Hive Mind: Drones lack individual thoughts, linked via a collective consciousness.?* Forcible Assimilation: They inject nanoprobes to turn sentient beings into drones.?* Pursuit of Perfection: They conquer civilizations to absorb tech and unique knowledge.?* Famous Catchphrase: “Resistance is futile,” warning targets that adaptation is impossible.[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]…”
“The The Militant, published by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the United States, is one of the few Trotskyist papers that expresses support for Israel. They defend Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jewish people while advocating for a two-state solution. [1, 2, 3]
Historically and ideologically, mainstream Trotskyist movements have strongly opposed Zionism, defining the Israeli state as an imperialist outpost. However, the U.S. SWP reversed its traditional anti-Zionist stance, increasingly defending Israel against what they characterize as antisemitic currents within the global left. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
For a UK-based perspective, Trotskyists have generally rejected Zionism but have been vocal in critiquing the broader left’s hostility toward Israeli Jews. Publications associated with the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, such as Workers’ Liberty, often advocate for the right of Israeli Jews to self-determination alongside Palestinian rights. [1, 2, 3]”