cover image Shush!: Growing Up Jewish Under Stalin: A Memoir

Shush!: Growing Up Jewish Under Stalin: A Memoir

Emil Draitser, . . Univ. of California, $24.95 (301pp) ISBN 978-0-520-25446-6

Hunter College Russian professor Draitser recalls a post-WWII Odessa youth blighted by a pernicious and pervasive anti-Semitism that made him ashamed of being Jewish—so ashamed that decades after arriving in America, he still whispered references to things Jewish. A bewildered and reluctant observer of the rise of Russian chauvinism as the Cold War erupted, Draitser remembers how gangs of youngsters hunted Holocaust survivor children and permanently maimed his seven-year-old cousin; the discovery of his beloved Pushkin's hateful characterizations of Jews left him confused and disgusted with himself. He recalls the clouds of suspicion surrounding his mother's friend, a pediatrician, when Jewish doctors were targeted with trumped-up charges of sabotage in the 1950s “Doctors' Plot.” His parents' yearning to connect to their heritage is movingly portrayed: Draitser's father saved the peel from an Israeli orange, and his mother traveled to the boonies to surreptitiously purchase Passover matzos. This painful and acutely observed memoir will resonate with many readers; unfortunately, it ends with Stalin's death. How Draitser and his parents made their way to America and how they fared here are unexplored. 22 b&w photos. (Sept.)