Book review: The Yid, by Paul Goldberg

It is late February, in 1953. A gang of few Yids, plus a Black Proletarian worker from the oppressive America, speaking fluent Yiddish, are set on a mission: killing comrade Stalin, before it is too late. Too late before the Soviet Final Solution is implemented. There are also signs and testimonies, as Black Marias - the trademark car of 'intelligence' services - are busy transporting Jews. It is just the prelude of a massive operation aimed to make the great Soviet Union free of Jews. In his datcha, Stalin 'can imagine the multitude of Jews, foreign sounding names, and he cans ee the gallows he'll construct for killer doctors who had the gall to plot against them'. The Yids cannot let this happen. This tragic-comical team of Bar Kokhba fighters breathing Shakespearean drama and moving in the pace of Commedia dell'arte, but in Yiddish, succeeds and the Yids are saved. They do it discretely, as any lamed vovniks do and split ways. Mission accomplished.

 The author himself was born in the Soviet Union and emigrated later to the US with his family later. The book is based on a historical reality: Stalin did have a massive plan to eliminate Jews from the Soviet life that was interrupted by his death, in March 1953. There are a lot of stories about those events, including the assumption that Gd's will was not that Jews are destroyed. Another historical fact is that many Jews fought on behalf of the Soviets in the 'Big Patriotic War' and also many of them ended up in the Soviet prisons because considered disloyal and even, German spies. Sounds familiar...Personally, I've read as a child a couple of stories about a Black Proletarian worker that joined the Bolshevik revolution and become a citizen of the Soviet Union, but I bet there were more than one in the country of Soviets.

More than a historical tragic-comedy, the book develops many fine layers exploring the new and old transfigurations of anti-Semitism, from the blood libel to the 'Doctors' plot' and the everyday Jewish hate. As one of the characters is described: 'He hated us in the abstract. He hated the idea of our being. But one-on-one, he was a decent man. I've fought beside men like him, and I would again'. Sometimes the victim enters the logic of the accuser and assumes the labels assigned. In Paul Goldberg's book, the Yid is a common character, because this is how 'they' saw them, doesn't matter what.

Any story is nothing without the writing and in this respect, you have a happy mixture of many styles and influences, from Shakespeare to commedia dell'arte, Kafka and Daniil Kharms. Absurd and supernatural and a pinch of marxism-leninism, in the illegible Stalin version - what serious communist would ever give a 2 penny to Stalin writings. anyway. The dialogues are delicious and ridiculously smart. As smart as a pirouette with Finnish daggers in the heart of a NKVD little something coming to arrest a harmless clown.