He was positively impressed with the Jewish Autonomous Republic of Birobidzhan, and participated in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II, co-editing the literary section of the Committee's journal, "Eynikayt" (Unity). However, like many Soviet Jewish writers, he became a target of the antisemitic "rootless cosmopolitan" campaign. Arrested in January 1949, he was tried secretly and executed by a firing squad in the event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets on 12–13 August 1952. After Stalin's death, he was rehabilitated in 1955, and his complete works were published in the Soviet Union in 1961.