>09« 8 — The Conadlon Jewiili N'ewi, Friday, April 2na, 1965
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ByOurJCNFS Correspondent
/Moscow
Ilya Ehrenburg, the Russian writer, has plaimed that only personal appeal to Stalin saved Jiim from persecution and certain arrest, in 1949 during the purge iagainst so-called "rootless cosmopolitans."
Many of Ehrenbur-g's friends, mostly Jewish intellectuals, were arrested,.shot and murdered during the S t a 1 i n - B e r i a campaign against writers oii charges of "kow-towing to the West," Ehrenburg said.
Describing the atmosphere of the period in a new instalment of his memoirs in the latest issue of the arts maga-zine "Novy Mir" ("New Words"), Ehrenburg said: "From the beginning of Feb ruary 1949, they stopped publishing me. The literary critics erased my name from their articles. I expected a knock at the door every night. My telephone was silent and only my closest friends inquired about my health.
"Sometimes they Would call from a public telephone, apparently to learn whether I had not been arrested and when I answered the tele: phone they hung up."
Ehrenburg confirmed rumours that Solomon Mik-hoels, the famous director of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was murdered in a Minsk street in 1948 by "Beria's agents".
Lavrenti Beria was then chief of the secret police and was executed after Stalin's death on charges that he had plotted to overthrow the Government and establish a personal dictatorship.
LETTER TO KREMLIN
During the purges of 1948 Beria dissolved_al! Jewish cultural institutes and executed a group of the most prominent Yiddish writers, all of whom have been post-humously'^rehabilitated since Stalin's death.
Describing his personal travails during the Beria era, Ehrenburg said: "I wanted to live, and like many others, I had a suitcase packed with two changes of linen .. . We used to go to bed in the early morning then. The thought that they would come to wake us up in the middle of night was distressing."
While fatalistically waiting to be arrested, Ehrenburg was told that a senior Russian official had said at a public meeting: "I have good news for you—cosmopolitan Number One, the enemy of the people, Ehrenburg, has been exposed and cirrested."
That was when Ehrenburg decided to write to Stalin and told him: "For two months I have not been permitted to write for the press and yesterday someone said that I have been arrested.
"I have not been arrested yet and I want to clear up my position to end all this uncertainty."
MALENKOV APPROACH
The next day, Ehrenburg said, Georgi Malenkov, Stalin's right-hand man, telephoned him on Stalin's behalf and, pretending surprise that Ehrenburg was in danger, promised to help him.
"Immediately, my telephone began ringing again and various editorial offices, claiming that there had been a liiisunderstandihg, offered me work."
In reporting his bitter experience, Ehrenburg appeared to be particularly anxious to answer some of his critics abroad who had explained his sur yi v a I during the purges on the grounds that he had helped the authorities in their persecution of Jewish writers. .
On an earlier occasion, when asked how he happened to be one of the few sur^ vivors of the period,'he had said: "Life is like a lottery. I just happened to have drawn the right number,"
Discussing his position as a Russian writer of Jewish: origin, Ehrenburg said; "I shall always say I am ia Jew as long as there is one anti-Semite on earth. No national* ism dictates these words but my understanding of human dignity."
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