Fiddler on the Truth
from the Bolsheviks to the Palestine Holodomor
Fiddler on the Roof originated as stories about Tevye and his daughters completed in Yiddish in 1905. The stories are about Jews living in the Russian Pale of Settlement near Kiev, in today’s Ukraine.
The first daughter breaks a little with tradition, not wanting an arranged marriage with the butcher, Lazar Wolf, a wealthy man older than her father. With Tevye’s reluctant permission, she marries a poor tailor who’s been her friend since childhood.
The second daughter marries a Marxist revolutionary, without asking permission, who gets sent to Siberia. She goes there to be with him.
The third marries a non-Jew. For Tevye, this is ‘beyond the Pale.’ She is dead to him.
The last two daughters emigrate with him to the United States when they’re driven out by an impending pogrom. Tevye complains to God, ‘Why are we your chosen people? Chosen to suffer. Choose someone else once in awhile.’
This is a sentimental tear-jerker of a musical that has defined Jewish-Russian culture and history for three generations. Let’s set aside the catchy tunes and lovable characters and put this in its geopolitical context. What does it confirm or deny?
According to Wikipedia:
The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 … in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden. … The Pale of Settlement included all of modern-day Belarus and Moldova, much of Lithuania, Ukraine and east-central Poland, and relatively small parts of Latvia and what is now the western Russian Federation.
This is not a small area, nor a barren one. Ukraine, then as now, was a leading grain producer. Yet it continues that “Life in the Pale for many was economically bleak. Most people relied on small service or artisan work that could not support the number of inhabitants, which resulted in emigration.”
Why was this? A source I cited elsewhere noted that Jewish families in the Pale were known for their fecundity, having many children. They were middlemen, not producers, and outgrew the number of roles they could fill. But producers keep pace with supporting the inhabitants. In exchange for expanding their territory, Jewish merchants were not allowed to do business beyond the Pale.
What flourished in the Pale were yeshivas to study the Talmud, resisting the efforts of Russia to make them more secular, and the courts of Hasidic dynasties. Meanwhile 1 in 3 Jews in the Pale were supported by International Jewish welfare societies.
The second daughter marries a Marxist revolutionary. In 1903, the Bolsheviks broke with the Mensheviks and, under Lenin, seized power in the October revolution of 1917. Julius Skoolafish has been reading The Letters and Diary of Maria Romanov, Third Daughter to the Last Tsar 1908-1918 for perspective from the other side.
One article cites that “The late Rudolph Rummel, the demographer of government mass murder, estimated the human toll of twentieth-century socialism to be about 61 million in the Soviet Union … These victims perished during state-organized famines, collectivization, cultural revolutions, purges, campaigns against “unearned” income, and other devilish experiments in social engineering.”
If mere numbers aren’t enough, listen to Chapter 5 called ‘The Red Terror’ of The Myth of German Villainy by Benton Bradberry (thanks to Mark Elsis of Earth Newspaper). It chronicles, with excruciating details, the tortures used by the CHEKA, the secret police, who killed 10,000 within months. Bradberry names the CHEKA’s predominately Jewish leadership and members. The motives are revenge in the most sadistic forms possible, I had to stop listening halfway through. As a former Navy officer during the Cold War, Bradberry has no reason for bias.
A year prior during the Great War, in 1916, Germany called on neutral powers like the US at that time to negotiate for peace. They published an open letter in the NY Times showing it was done from a position of strength with no desire for retribution. As I covered in Kissinger & the Balfour Declaration, the Bolshevik Jews of Germany, Lord Rothschild, and the Zionist Federation promised England to bring the US into the war in exchange for Palestine. So President Wilson’s peace negotiations were rejected. If you’ve never read Benjamin Freedman’s 1961 speech, it’s the best place to understand the whole picture from a highly credible eyewitness.
Starting in November 1914, England imposed a starvation blockade on Germany by declaring that the entire North Sea would be mined, preventing commercial trade. Two-thirds of Germany’s food depended on imports. By 1918, 763,000 had died from the blockade, mostly children. Yet even after Germany had surrendered, the blockade stayed. The country’s gold couldn’t be used to buy food because it was needed for reparations. This drove them into the genocidal Treaty of Verseilles.
The November Revolution of 1918-1919 turned Germany into the Weimar Republic, known for its debauchery and decadence in the Roaring Twenties. I’d wondered how that was possible with the Weimar hyperinflation but the two were connected. The cheap money was used by the German Jews to buy up 30% of the assets and property, while they were half of one-percent of the population.
If the Pale of Settlement was seen as a hostile country, we would see it as infiltrating and toppling through assassination, treachery and coups, both its neighbor to the East, Russia, and its neighbor to the West, Germany. Freedman shows that the word Jew didn’t exist until the 18th century and calls the religion Talmudism. The ethnic origin of those who call themselves Jews, he states, is Khazaria, modern Ukraine, then the Pale of Settlement right where the Fiddling with the Truth is located.
Were the Bolsheviks Jews? In The Fascio Newletter, DoomerNationalist and Zoltanous write Judeo-Bolshevism is Real:
In this extremely comprehensive article, the authors provide painstaking details about the Jewish role in Soviet Communism, the CHEKA, and the capital financing of the Bolshevik Revolution. To make my point with authority, I would quote it in full. But here, I’d like to focus on the Holodomor:
The Holodomor refers to the artificially induced famine in Ukraine that led to the deaths of millions of Russians and Ukrainians. … For instance, research documented in The Causes of Ukrainian Famine Mortality, 1932-33 reveals:
“Anti-Ukrainian bias in Soviet policy explains up to 92% of famine mortality in Ukraine and 77% in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus; approximately half of the total effect comes from bias in the centrally planned food procurement policy.”
— Andrei Markevich, Natalya Naumenko, Nancy Qian, The Causes of Ukrainian Famine Mortality, 1932-33
In this context, the role of Lazar Kaganovich in amplifying the death toll in Ukraine warrants discussion. As a prominent figure close to Stalin and his brother-in-law, being the sibling of Stalin's third wife, who was Jewish, Kaganovich was the only Jewish member of the Politburo in the 1930s. His influence was considerable; he was dispatched to Kharkov, the Ukrainian capital at the time, with orders to enforce an annual grain procurement quota of 356 million pood [12.9 billion pounds]. Despite appeals from the Ukrainian Politburo to lessen the grain requisitions from peasants, Kaganovich, together with Molotov, steadfastly refused these appeals. They then enacted a policy demanding higher grain output and imposed severe penalties for failure to comply.
A notable edict from Stalin and Kaganovich criminalized the theft or damage of state or collective farm assets, making it punishable by death. Kaganovich's measures, including his directives on grain procurement and his involvement in the demolition of major religious sites like Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, have been criticized for their severity. His actions, especially during the 1932–33 Holodomor famine, led the Kyiv Court of Appeal to cite them as evidence of his participation in genocidal acts against Ukrainians. Raised in an environment steeped in Jewish ethnocentrism, Kaganovich's upbringing and actions are detailed in Stuart Kahan's biography, The Wolf of The Kremlin, highlighting his early influences, including his uncle's teachings.
“‘Whatever is good for the Jews,’ Uncle Levick had said to him. ‘Follow only that line of reasoning.’” — Stuart Kahan, The Wolf of The Kremlin
The word Holodomor comes from the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor). We are now seeing a holodomor, hunger extermination, of Palestinians. What are the odds that the wealthy old butcher of Fiddler would be Lazar Wolf and Lazar Kaganovich would be The Wolf of the Kremlin and the butcher of Ukraine who killed millions of non-Jews in the same place? We could call the Holodomor Tevye’s revenge.
Jasun Horsley of Children of Job has also been doing a dangerous dive into Ron Unz vs. the Bolshy Jews:
He referred to Germany and the Jewish Problem, a 1939 work by Friedrich Karl Wiebe, available online. I found its statement of Germany’s motivation in taking in the Jews to be consistent with Freedman’s. Wiebe writes:
Animated by a desire to solve this ancient problem if possible, by the emancipation and assimilation of Jewish elements, Germany had shown herself more accessible to the absorption of Jews than many other countries had done. All barriers had been taken down, all restrictions abolished, all spheres of activity opened unreservedly to the Jews—nay, leading positions were assigned to them even in those domains which were of the most vital importance for national life. The Jews, who numbered less than 1% of the total population of Germany, occupied the key posts in German industry. Political leadership was to a large extent in their hands. The Press and cultural life in general were predominantly under their influence. Their aggregate income exceeded that of the 99 % remaining inhabitants by over one-third. Truly, the Jews had every conceivable opportunity for merging their distinctive existence in the collective life of the German community.
But the Jews consistently ignored the rules of fair play as far as their credulous German partner was concerned. …
As an example of that, Wiebe cites the official “Statistics of the German Reich” for 1892 to 1901 on Jewish crimes compared with Christian criminals in:
Fraud & Trickery:14 times greater
Usury: 13 times greater
Copyright infringement: 11 times greater
Fraudulent bankruptcy: 9 times greater
Fraudulent insolvency: 6 times greater
Receiving stolen property: 5 times greater
This echoes the early American ethnographer I cited on Jewish Russian immigrants who said that courts were stymied when an oath to tell the truth meant nothing, per the Kol Nidre. Weibe concludes:
Who has championed the cause of those millions of Russians driven from their land by the Bolshevist revolution, or who, unable to escape in time, were tortured and massacred? Who ever spent a thought on the Germans in the Baltic States, 80% of whom were forced to emigrate after the Great War, and who to a large extent are condemned to a life of perpetual hardship in foreign countries?
On the other hand, wherever the interests of even a single Jew are affected, international Jewry howls for redress and assistance until international peace is seriously menaced by its bellowings.
If we were to look at these as actions by a ruling dynasty out to conquer the world, we'd see them as acts of aggression: inciting civil war and foreign coups. When headlines ran “Judea Declares War on Germany” in 1933, Judah was acting as a nation without borders declaring war on a foreign nation. The full-page ad is here:
Fourteen million Jews dispersed through the world have banded together as one man to declare war on the German persecutors of their co-religionists. Sectional differences and antagonisms have been submerged in one common aim — to stand by the 600,000 Jews of Germany who are terrorized by Hitlerist anti-semitism, and to compel Fascist Germany to end its campaign of violence and suppression directed against its Jewish minority.
World Jewry has made up its mind not to rest quiescent in face of the arrive of medieval Jew-baiting.
Germany may be called up to pay a heavy price for Hitler’s antagonism to the Jews. She is faced with an international boycott in commerce, finance, and ministry. She may find herself in spiritual and cultural isolation, recoiling before the burning crusade that Jews of all lands are launching in defence of their afflicted brethren.
The Jewish merchant prince is leaving his counting-house, the banker his board-room, the shopkeeper his store, and the pedlar his humble barrow to join together in what has become a holy war to combat the Hitlerite enemies of the Jew.
Who is “the Jewish merchant-prince” leaving his counting room? Perhaps the same Bauer turned Rothschild in whose mansion Hitler’s grandmother worked as a maid when she become pregnant with Hitler’s father? And of what is he a prince, if this is a religion and not a conquering nation?
The third daughter assimilates into Russia through marriage to a Russian rather than a Jew. While the point of the story is that Russia is bigoted and hateful to not allow Jews into Russian communities against their will, it is not seen as bigoted and hateful for a Jew to make his daughter ‘dead to him’ for allowing in a Russian.
It’s only when the daughter and son-in-law choose to share the father’s hatred that the father gives his blessing. She says that they are moving to Poland because they refuse to live among people who can treat others like that. And Tevye tells the other daughter to say, “God be with you.”
The story requires us to accept that Russians, because of their inherently defective moral character, commit violence for no reason—or commit violence at all, since we’re reading fiction, not history. The Russians are not real people but monsters, says the longest-running Broadway play before Grease.
This story told to 100 generations of Jews is that their problems are caused by other people’s hatred, therefore justifying whatever is done in return—lying, cheating, stealing, snubbing, starving, torturing, or killing. Their problems are not caused by Lazar Kaganovich the Wolf demanding 13 billion pounds of grain from starving Ukrainians or the Red Terror tortures that kept me awake last night. Not caused by Robert Kagan and the new Nazi-Zionists burning Odessans alive or inflicting the torturous hunger extermination of Palestinians.
And the story told to 100 generations of Christians is that the Roman Empire was a friend to Jesus but the bloodthirsty Jews forced poor helpless Pontius Pilate to inflict the worst forms of torture and death on him. Jesus couldn’t be part of the empire when he was clearly a victim of it. Whatever lying, cheating, stealing, snubbing, starving, torturing or killing is done in his name, to expand the Holy Roman Empire, is justified by God.
That same God who required blood sacrifice in the Old Testament still requires torture and death in the New. It’s the same empire-in-victim’s-clothing. It still represents hatred and calls it love. It still names a scapegoat to deflect AND incite more violence. So don’t be feeling superior because you’ve fallen for another sociopathic scripture version 2.0.
I feel like I’ve been ingesting poison the last few days in order to metabolize it. We are here to heal this intergenerational trauma and stop it from continuing. Socio-spirituality is taking a hard look at the reality in the world, which we’ve done, going to the darkest side of history. But at the same time, it’s questioning the Reality of the world.
When we bring these stories to light and find their meaning, it changes the future. But it also might change the past. The past is a story and once it’s served its purpose, it can be released like ghosts tethered to their secrets. There’s a reason this is all coming out now and you’re the reason.
Repeat after me: People are good. People are kind. It’s human nature to want everyone to be happy and content, as well as yourself. If anyone tells you differently, it’s because they secretly want it to be true so much that it hurts to hope. You’re surrounded by people who want the same thing you do. Don’t give up on them.
Introduction to my in-process book, A House for the Soul in the Land Beyond Faith. I talk about why the question is more important than the answer, how to develop your own theology of synthesis, what building materials welcome the terrain instead of fighting it, and how paradox differs from contradiction. As I wrote then and is true now, “I think there’s an importance to alternating between the social and spiritual elements. Enjoy the respite. There is some very heavy material coming and I think these two are related. The more that you can look at these issues without needing anyone to blame, being able to forgive everyone, the deeper that you can get into the absolute ugliness of all the things that are going down.”
Looks at the power of religion to make good people do evil things. Defines scripture and inner vs. external authority. Sees IDF soldiers as puppets with stories being the strings that control them. Quotes Bassam Youssef on Israel as a narcissistic psychopath that f*cks you up and then makes you think it's your fault.
Thank you so much for bringing these stories to light, Tereza. There are many valuable insights in this post.
A stunning (almost perfect) succinct summary of the true history of the period. Tereza, you really have committed so much of your time and emotion to really studying this. Thank you for sharing and articulating. Here is another for our collective dossier.
• "Harvest of Despair" (English) - a documentary film about Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932 – 1933 – ucrdc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHm_1uN80s0