The tribulations of the Jewish people in the last century in the Holocaust and under the oppressive Soviets, as well as the glorious resurrection in Israel, are all represented in the unbelievable life story of Anatoly Rubin, a Holocaust survivor and prisoner of Zion.
This month marks one year since his death. But his life story could have been made into a movie, or even a series of movies.
Rubin was born in Minsk, Belarus, in 1927. After the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union and occupied the city, his family was forced into a ghetto. At 13 years old, this was the first circle of hell he would endure. His father was murdered when he set out to search for his family in the chaos. Later, when the Jews of the area were being marched to their deaths, Rubin and his older sister, Tamar, managed to pull away from the doomed group and fled. Tamar was caught by the Germans several months later and subsequently tortured and executed.
Like the other ghetto residents young and old, Anatoly Rubin was forced into labor. When another group of Jews was sent to be killed, he managed to escape again, and this time hid in a rural area, in a village in western Belarus. He hid until the Germans retreated, only to emerge from hiding to find that his entire family had been murdered.
Under the red boot
After the war, with the reality in the Stalinist Soviet Union particularly unforgiving, Rubin's troubles did not end. He was arrested, for purely anti-Semitic reasons, on a baseless charge of defecting. He was sent back to hell nonetheless. This time, instead of the ghetto, it was forced labor, and the scenery was different – but the hardships were the same.
Three decades later, after having come to Israel, Anatoly described the similarities between the two coercion and murder machines in his book "Brown Boots, Red Boots – From the Ghetto in Minsk to the Camps of Siberia."
It is safe to assume that he would not have survived the full five-year sentence in the forced labor camp. But after 18 months his sentence was commuted. He returned to Minsk, where the horrors of his early life affected him in an unexpected way: Instead of turning into a docile, fearful Soviet citizen, he decided to connect with his roots. He realized that he belonged, together with all Jews, in Israel, and became determined to one day live in the land of his forefathers.
So Rubin began engaging in Zionist activity. He sought out other Jews, distributed and received Jewish literature, and, in 1957, even boldly made contact with Israelis visiting the Soviet Union as part of an international student festival. All this did not escape the watchful eye of the KGB. For the henchmen of the secret Soviet service, Rubin's tragic past and miraculous survival, first under the Nazis and then in the Siberian work camp, were no reason to give citizen him any special treatment. On the contrary. In the Soviet Union of that time, everyone was a suspect. Always.
But exactly what crime led to his arrest? What careless misstep got him taken to the KGB cellar?
After Rubin's death, his family realized that no one knew the precise answer. So in an effort to get at the truth, they turned to the Nativ bureau, which was responsible for helping Soviet Jews during the Cold War. Before the Iron Curtain fell, the bureau's activities were conducted in secret, and its rich archive – a treasure trove of information – was not yet accessible to the public. The new head of Nativ, Neta Briskin Peleg, took the Rubin case on and searched for relevant information. She procured a file of documents and testimonies from the archive bearing the name "Anatoly Rubin," and thanks to her dedication, the documents there were made available to the family.
The papers revealed a surprise that shocked everyone, even the Nativ representatives. It turned out that Rubin had traveled on business to Riga, and in his spare time visited bookshops to look for Jewish materials. In one bookshop, he came across a man who was holding a Jewish book, and, his curiosity getting the better of him, approached him to inquire about the book. Abandoning the caution that a Soviet citizen should have exercised, he went home with the man, where he saw many books with Jewish themes. When this new "friend" asked Rubin his name and place of residence, he volunteered the information willingly.
The man, who was in fact a Jewish activist, was shocked by his guest's uncharacteristic openness and immediately suspected him of being a provocateur sent by the KGB to entrap him. The atmosphere of chronic suspicion in 1950s Soviet Union did not allow for the possibility that an earnest man would approach a stranger in broad daylight to talk about Jewish topics and even ask for help in acquiring underground Jewish literature. It did not make sense.
Convinced that Rubin was actually a KGB agent, the Jewish activist – who will remain unnamed for privacy purposes – had only one logical course of action at his disposal: He turned him in to the KGB several days later, not realizing that he had sealed Rubin's fate. He did not intend to rat out an honest and innocent fellow Jew and send him directly into the jaws of the KGB. He simply believed that his enthusiastic visitor was a KGB agent testing his loyalty, and the only way to prove this loyalty was to turn him in.
A tragedy of errors
In a movie script, this turn of events could be labeled a comedy of errors. But the Soviet reality in 1958 was anything but a comedy. Rubin was jailed along with two other Jews from Minsk and sentenced to six years of forced labor. In addition to charges of Zionist activity, he was also framed as having conspired to assassinate Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who was visiting Minsk at the time.
But even six difficult years in the Siberian forced labor camp failed to beat the Zionism out of the stubborn Jew. Rubin was released in 1964 and resumed the same Zionist acitivties that had sent him to prison. He distributed Zionist literature and raised awareness among Soviet Jews. At this time, Jewish activist Eli Walk, who had just completed high school and was to begin his studies in Minsk, was sent to meet with Rubin.
"I was a messenger. Veteran activists in Riga, some of whom had been in the camps with Rubin, gave me an underground copy of the book 'Exodus' by Leon Uris, so that he could distribute it among Minsk's Jews," Walk says.
Possession and distribution of Zionist literature was considered an egregious crime at that time, so the two met in a nondescript streetcar station in accordance with underground guidelines.
"I waited at that station in minus-30 degree weather, and he didn't show. I began to question whether I had been careful enough," Walk says.
"Then another meeting was set up, in a safe house at a third party's apartment. I traveled there, following all the underground codes, changing streetcars along the way, and I finally met Tuliya [Anatoly] Rubin. He was mature and experienced and he drew Minsk's young Jewish activists to him like a magnet."
The "Minsk gang," led by Rubin, kept the Jewish Zionist movement alive. At this point, even the Soviet authorities had to admit that it would be better to just get rid of Rubin, lest he "corrupt" more young Jews. In 1969, Rubin was granted permission to go to Israel. He was the first Minsk Jew allowed to emigrate to Israel after the Six-Day War.
The horrors had finally come to an end for Rubin. But even outside the Iron Curtain, he kept fighting to liberate the Jews of the Soviet Union. His efforts, coordinated with Nativ, included worldwide activism, including direct help to Jews still oppressed in the Soviet Union.
Reading Rubin's book and perusing the documents in his Nativ file, it is clear that anyone who did not experience his life could not possibly understand his pain. Words do not suffice to describe the ordeal that this man endured, from childhood into adulthood, in the worst places thought up by the human mind.
How can anyone survive three circles of hell, three rounds of endless torture, without breaking? I do not have the answer. It seems Rubin had a rare combination of pride and Jewish courage, which allowed him to persevere. Even under inhuman conditions, he refused to surrender. In a place where prison wardens and criminals had the upper hand, he dared fight against every form of anti-Semitism, whether from camp commanders or from violent prisoners lacking moral inhibitions. If he had to fight and strike, he fought and struck. He fought the devil – first in the form of Nazis, then in the form of the Soviets – and won.
After making aliyah and moving to Israel, Rubin settled down, married, and finally enjoyed the peace he had earned. This was the time to tell his story. He married none other than Karni Jabotinsky, the granddaughter of Revisionist Zionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky, a poet of Jewish courage and pride. The symbolism is hard to miss. Perhaps this pairing was orchestrated by a phantom screenwriter.
Rubin's tale of heroism, as well as the stories of other prisoners of Zion who founded the Soviet Zionist movement, are sorely under-appreciated. Soviet Jewry was nicknamed in Israel the "Jewry of silence." But the name is misleading. While the voice of Soviet Jewry may not have been heard for decades in Israel and in other democratic countries, it was not because the voice was silent. It was silenced and strangled by oppression and the Iron Curtain. But it speaks out from the thousands of files gathering dust in the Nativ archive, waiting to be pulled out into the Israeli sunlight. If that does not happen, it will be yet another great injustice suffered by the anonymous heroes of the Jewish underground in the evil Soviet empire.
Anatoly Rubin was a humble Jew, and that is why hardly anyone has heard of his accomplishments. In 2012, he was asked to light a traditional torch in a state ceremony on Holocaust Remembrance Day. But the story of his heroism never made it into the public eye. His book was published in only a limited edition, although it should have been widely distributed. Perhaps it should also be included in the Education Ministry's curriculum, if only because it has the power to answer the eternal question of "who is a Jew?" Of all the proposed answers, my favorite is one offered by author and educator Ari Alon, who said, "A Jew is anyone who looks at himself in the mirror of history and sees a Jew." I'm sure Anatoly Rubin would have warmly embraced this definition of a Jew.
When I look at the trajectory of Rubin's life, I see a symbol of the 20th century Jew. Now that this trajectory has come to an end, it is our duty to cherish it forever.
