Sections

“Anti-Zionism” and anti-Semitism under socialism: an overdue reappraisal

In Soviet-era state socialism, there were repeated anti-Semitic campaigns from 1945 until the fall of the Berlin Wall. At the same time, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories flared up in different ways. In a two-part film series spanning the years 2024 and 2025, the JFBB will use various film examples to reflect on the relationship between “anti-Zionism” and anti-Semitism and reflect on continuities and breaks in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the political culture of Eastern Europe. This will be complemented by panel discussions. In 2024, the film series will be dedicated to anti-Semitism during socialism, and in 2025 to the period of reunification and the post-socialist 1990s.

In the wake of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, there are increasing calls for a more intensive reappraisal of the post-war socialist era. Precisely because the politically and militarily aggressive Russia is claiming the legacy of the Soviet Union for itself, countless questions are now being raised about the history of the socialist era. Why were war crimes and crimes against humanity in general never systematically dealt with and why were those responsible rarely brought to justice? What was the relationship of Russia, Russian culture and the Russian language to the other Soviet republics and to the non-Russian peoples in today's Russian Federation? In this context, it will be interesting for us to take a look at state anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and other socialist states, including the GDR. The film and discussion series Break or Continuity? “Anti-Zionism” and anti-Semitism under socialism and after aims to show film examples of anti-Semitic propaganda in socialist countries and films that reflect this mood - what pressure were Jews exposed to against the backdrop of rampant conspiracy theories? What role did the fact that the Soviet Union denied for many years that a Holocaust had even taken place on its territory play? How were these sentiments fueled by anti-Israel propaganda? The series sheds light on state and post-socialist anti-Semitism and reflects on politics and history using the example of propaganda films and cinematic reappraisals. In a panel discussion, it sheds light on the historical contexts - from the Slánský trials to the GDR's cautious but still overly clear anti-Israeli policy against the backdrop of Germany's Nazi history

There have already been individual contributions on the topic in the JFBB program in recent years.

In 2023, the Polish feature film MARCH '68 by Krzysztof Lang had its German premiere in the Feature Film competition. The film centers on a love story between a young non-Jew and a Jewish woman who meet in March 1968 on the fringes of the student protests in Warsaw. At the same time, Władysław Gomułka's government is running an anti-Semitic campaign. After Israel was able to win the Yom Kippur War against the surrounding Arab states and thus consolidate its statehood, the socialist states - led by the Soviet Union - sided with the Arab countries. Behind the “anti-Zionist” and “anti-imperialist” propaganda, anti-Semitic traits quickly emerged; in Poland in 1968, all Jews still remaining in the country after the Shoah were called upon to emigrate. In history and political science, however, these events disappear behind the invasion of the Warsaw Pact states into reform socialist Czechoslovakia and the student protests in Western Europe.

Also screened in the 2023 JFBB program was the documentary FIND A JEW (directed by Anna Narinskaya, Igor Sadreev), which traces anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union from the early Stalin era to the 1980s in a pointed, sometimes satirical form. It deals, for example, with the so-called “doctors' conspiracy” - at the end of 1952, Joseph Stalin spread news about an alleged plot by doctors of Jewish origin who had planned to eliminate him and other leaders of the Soviet Union; the “exposure” led to numerous arrests and executions; a special coin was called the “Zionist ruble”, on which resourceful anti-Semites believed they recognized a Star of David in the lithium symbol at the beginning of the 1980s. The minting of the coin was discontinued earlier than planned.

In order to delve deeper into the topic and take it up again more explicitly, we have decided to look at excerpts from Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Poland and the Soviet Union. While current films deal retrospectively with show trials and everyday anti-Semitism, contemporary works bear witness to what could be said - and what could not.

For example, the cult film THE EAR, shot during the “Prague Spring” in the ČSSR, is understood as an allegory of the arrest of Slánský and his wife. Slánský was one of the many Jews who were arrested during the Stalin era on charges of Zionism, imperialism, Americanism, Trotskyism and Titoism. 14 people from the leading cadre of the Communist Party were charged, eleven of them sentenced to death. THE EAR was banned after the suppression of the Prague Spring as part of the so-called “normalization” and remained in the poison cabinet until the end of socialism.

Konrad Wolf's cult film GOYA - ODER DER ARGE WEG DER ERKENNTNIS (“GOYA - OR THE DIFFICULT PATH OF KNOWLEDGE) is also interpreted by many as a metaphor for the Stalinist show trials, except that it is not a Communist Party functionary who is accused here at the beginning of the 1950s, but a painter at the royal court of Charles IV during the Inquisition in Spain. Goya himself falls into the clutches of the Inquisition - a very indirect metaphor for the conditions under socialism, which is why the German-Soviet co-production was not banned.

An interesting aspect is the striking linguistic and ideological proximity between the GDR propaganda film DIE STÜRMER, which accuses the West German Springer newspapers and the Israeli army of using Nazi methods, and current anti-Israeli discourse: It is all about anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism. As the US historian Jeffrey Herf recently pointed out in his book “Israel's Moment”, the Soviet bloc had sided with Zionism until 1949, and the countries on whose ground the Shoah had taken place were particularly supportive of the United Nations' partition plan - while the USA and the mandate power Great Britain were skeptical of the Zionist project. The fact that the UN delegate and later Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko emphasized the “indescribable suffering” in the Holocaust and commented on the intended founding of the state of Israel with the words: “It would be unjust to deny the Jewish people the right to achieve this goal.” In 1948, Vladimir Clementis, then Foreign Minister of the USSR, organized an airlift that delivered weapons to Jewish organizations to defend themselves against Arab attacks.

A few years later, Clementis was one of the defendants in the Slánský trials and was sentenced to death. The turnaround was the result of power games within the entire socialist camp, but fell on the fertile ground of an existing anti-Semitic mood. This hardly subsided in the period that followed and reached further heights with the “anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist” propaganda surrounding the Six-Day and Yom Kippur Wars. Once again, the parallels to the present are striking: Jews living in the country were co-addressed in the context of anti-Israeli accusations and the propaganda served anti-Semitic conspiracy scenarios just as much as it used them to share an “anti-imperialist” context with broad appeal.

The mention of the brief phase of support from the socialist countries for the Israel project is intended to remind us of how different attitudes were there shortly after the end of the Second World War. By taking a closer look at the use of anti-Semitic motifs and conspiracy scenarios in power politics and propaganda under socialism, the film series shows how anti-Semitism was continuously used in politics and that it certainly did not disappear with the victory over National Socialism, as is so often claimed today. The opposite becomes clear, as anti-Semitism was strategically fueled time and again and evoked a social mood that ultimately led to the mass emigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s.

The series Break or Continuity? “Anti-Zionism” and anti-Semitism under socialism and after is supported by the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship.

Advisors: Dr. Christina Frankenberg, Kornel Miglus, Dr. Lisa Schoß, Jörg Taszman