Genrikh Yagoda is the person similar in appearance to Hitler and responsible for over 10 million deaths
Issac Steinberg escaped Russia when he heard that in Russian politics he could cleansed. He actually came to Australia in the hope that our government would allow him to establish a Jewish homeland in the Kimberley’s.
Jonathan Brent, the executive director of the YIVO Institute, says that it is important to discuss these subjects even if they make people uncomfortable.
A lot of people do not realize that there were Jews in Stalin’s secret police,” Brent said. “This is something that really needs to be talked about. Some of these individuals had fathers who were rabbis in the shtetls.
”NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda was Jewish, Brent says, and the first minister of justice in Soviet Russia, Isaac Steinberg, was a religious Jew. And, according to Brent, the instrumental person in the arrest of renowned Jewish author Isaac Babel was also Jewish.
‘Everybody [in Stalin’s Russia] was a victim and a victimizer,” he said. “This is a hard thing for the Jews to understand. They can’t stand the idea of being more than innocent victims.”
