Jewish Antifascist Committee 

     The Jewish Antifascist Committee (JAC) was formed in
Kuibyshev in April 1942.  Two Polish Jewish socialists, Henryk
Erlich and Viktor Alter (both of whom were later secretly
executed), may have proposed the idea to Lavrenti Beria, the head
of the NKVD.  The organization was meant to serve the interests
of Soviet foreign policy and the Soviet military through media
propaganda -- as well as through personal contacts with Jews
abroad, especially in Britain and the United States, designed to
influence public opinion and enlist foreign support for the
Soviet war effort. 
     The chairman of the JAC was Solomon Mikhoels, a famous actor
and director of the Moscow Yiddish State Theater.  Shakne
Epshtein, a Yiddish journalist, was the secretary and editor of
the JAC's newspaper, Einikait (Unity).  Other prominent JAC
members were the poet Itsik Feffer, a former member of the Bund
(a Jewish socialist movement that existed from 1897 to 1921 and
supported the Mensheviks), the writer Il'ia Ehrenburg, General
Aaron Katz of the Stalin Military Academy, and Boris Shimelovich,
the chief surgeon of the Red Army, as well as some non-Jews from
the arts, sciences, and the military. 
     A year after its establishment, the JAC was moved to Moscow
and became one of the most important centers of Jewish culture
and Yiddish literature until the German invasion.  The JAC
broadcast pro-Soviet propaganda to foreign audiences several
times a week, telling them of the absence of anti-Semitism and of
the great anti-Nazi efforts being made by the Soviet military. 
     In 1948, Mikhoels was assassinated by secret agents of
Stalin, and, as part of a newly launched official anti-Semitic
campaign, the JAC was disbanded in November and most of its