How Stalin, the 'breaker of nations,' hated, murdered Jews

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STALIN AND THE JEWS: THE RED BOOK: The Tragedy of the Soviet Jews

By Arno Lustiger

Foreword by Yefim Etkind.

Translated from the German.

Enigma Books, $29, 446 pages, illus.

REVIEWED BY ARNOLD BEICHMAN

Joseph Stalin had a favorite saying by which he lived and multitudes died. It went like this: "est chelovek, est problema, net cheloveka -- net problemy." Or, "a person, a problem; no person -- no problem." Millions of people in the Soviet Union became un-persons during his quarter-century rule. While the Georgian-born Stalin didn't particularly favor one nationality over another during his reign of terror, he was a "breaker of nations," as in Robert Conquest's book title -- and he had a particular hatred for Soviet Jews. Stalin's own daughter, Svetlana, attested to that psychosis:

"His anti-Semitism surely originated from the long years of struggle with Trotsky and his supporters,. What was originally political hate gradually became a feeling of racial hatred against all Jews, without exception."