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Titolo: Ehrenburg, cenni sulla vita e le opere

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/eburg.htm
by birthday from the calendar.
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  Ilya Ehrenburg (1891-1967) - name also written: Il'ia Grigor'evich
Erenburg
Prolific Russian writer and journalist who played as a link between Soviet
and Western intellectuals before and after the Cold War. From the 1930s to
the 1960s Ehrenburg was one of the most visible Soviet figures, who spent
the second half of his life as a respected messenger of the Soviet state.
Without being a member of the Communist Party, he moved freely in foreign
countries and held important cultural positions. Ehrenburg published poetry,
short stories, travel books, essays, and several novels, which combined
patriotism with cosmopolitanism. Ehrenburg adapted his writings to Soviet
political demands and avoided conflicts, that destroyed many other writers
and artist.
"How can the folk in tropics dwelling,
Where roses in December grow
Where people hardly know the spelling
Of the words like 'blizzard' and 'ice floe,'
Where even azure, even pleasant,
Above the sails a silken sky,
Since time primordial to the present,
The selfsame summer soothing the eye.
How can they even for a twinkling,
In a slumber, or in daydream learn,
How can they have the slightest inkling
Of what it means for spring to yearn,
Or how in freezing winter vainly,
When dour despondency holds sway
To wait and wait until ungainly
And massive ice gets under way."
(...)
Ilya Ehrenburg was born in Kiev, Ukraine, into a middle-class Jewish family.
When he was five his parents moved to Moscow, where his father operated a
brewery. In his memoirs, People, Years, Life (1960-65), Ehrenburg tells that
he was pampered in his childhood and it was a mere chance that he did not
become a juvenile delinquent. He attended First Moscow gymnasium, but he was
arrested in his early teens for revolutionary activities and excluded from
the 6th grade. Among his close friends during these years was Nikolai
Bukharin, the Russian revolutionary who was shot in 1938 during Stalin's
terror. Ehrengburg was imprisoned for five months. After release he went to
Poltava where his uncle lived. In 1908 Ehrenburg immigrated to Paris to
avoid trial for revolutionary agitation. He spent much time in Left Bank
cafés, met V.I. Lenin, who wanted to hear news from Moscow, and started to
write poetry under the influence of Verlaine, Francis Jammes, and Konstantin
Dmitrievich Balmont. His first collection of verse appeared in 1910. In
France Ehrenburg's become friends with such legendary figures as Picasso,
Apollinaire, Ferdinand Léger, who showed him drawings made in the trenches
of WW I, and Modigliani.
During the war Ehrenburg was a war correspondent at the front. His
anti-communist poem, 'Prayer for Russia', appeared in 1917. After returning
to his home country, he lived in Kiev, where he worked as a teacher,
Kharkov, Kerch, Feodossiia, and Moscow. He also traveled to Georgia with
Osip Mandel'shtam. His other friends included Mayakovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva,
S.A. Jesenin, and Pasternak read him poems. Later Ehrenburg criticized
Paternak's famous novel Doctor Zhivago - he considered it false. In 1919
Ehrenburg married Liubov' Kozintseva; they had one daughter. From 1921 to
1924 Enrenburg lived in Berlin and Belgium. His first novel, The
Extraordinary Adventures of Julia Jurenito and his Disciplines, appeared in
1922 and ridiculed both the capitalist West and the communist system. The
work - a parody of the Gospels - was in many ways controversial: it was
blasphemous toward Christianity, it attacked socialists, pacifists, and all
governmental organizations. The central character is a cynical prophet Julio
Jurenito, whose seven disciples are thrown in the global turmoil. The novel
also includes authentic characters, such as Mayakovski, Picasso, Chaplin,
Riviera, and Tatlin. In 1925 Ehrenburg was called a nihilist in a book
written by I. Tereštšenko.
Julio Jurenito dies at the age of 33 in a provincial Russian town. He is a
cynical prophet, an Antichrist, whose teachings are based on hatred, he
promotes the destruction of beauty and all arts unless there is a
Utilitarian purpose for their products. His involvement in behind-the-scene
plotting, somehow connected with the progression toward World War I and the
Russian Revolution, never becomes clear. Among his seven disciples are such
ethnic stereotypes as an American industrial entrepreneur, an easy-going
Italian, a militaristic German, and a noble and naïve African. Ehrenburg
himself is the first disciple and the author-narrator.
Ehrenburg's The Stormy Life and Lazar Roitschwantz (1928) was a version of
Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier of Svejk and Voltaire's Candide. The hero
is a Jewish ghetto tailor who escapes from Russian anti-Semitism and whose
adventures take him through a half a dozen countries and several prison.
Lazar works as a rabbit breeder in Tula, rabbi in Frankfurt, police informer
for Scotland Yard, film actor in Berlin, a starving pioneer in Palestine,
and painter in Paris. Ehrenburg's satirizes among others the phoney artists
of the Quartier Latin and the speculators in the Weimar Republic. He also
viewed skeptically the era of the New Economic Policy in the Soviet Union.
Zhizn i gibel Nikolaya Kurbova (1923) was about the downfall of a Soviet
secret policeman and The Love of Jeanne Ney (1924) depicted a love affair
between a Russian Communist and a French woman. Out of Chaos (1934) was an
apologia for Socialist Realism, and in Ne perevodya dykhania (1935) the
writer accepted the official Communist policy in economic and political
matters.
From 1925 to 1945 Ehrenburg lived in Paris, working as a foreign editor of
Soviet newspapers. At intervals he returned to the USSR. With the American
director Lewis Milestone Ehrenburg composed in 1933 a screenplay for a film,
based on one of his stories, but the film was never realized. When the
International Writers Congress was held in Moscow in 1934, he opposed Gorky,
who advocated the doctrine of Socialist realism.
During the Spanish Civil War Ehrenburg wrote for the Soviet newspaper
Izvestiia. He met Ernest Hemingway in Madrid - according to Ehrenburg he was
at that time young and thin. In 1941 he returned to Moscow and listened
Stalin's radio speech after the Nazis had attacked the Soviet Union. Stalin
was nervous, he drank water and called his listeners "brothers, sisters,
friends". Ehrenburg worked as a war correspondent. His ambitious novel, The
Fall of Paris (1941-42), depicted the decline of capitalist France.
Ehrenburg's reputation made him a target of Goebbel's propaganda. As late as
January 1945 Hitler claimed that Stalin's flunkey Ilya Ehrenburg manifests,
that the people of Germany must be destroyed.
The Storm (1949) and The Ninth Wave (1951-52) reflected the atmosphere of
the Cold War - Stalin himself defended against critics The Storm, in which a
Soviet citizen falls in love with a French woman. In The Thaw (1954-56)
Ehrenburg tested the boundaries of free speech in the relatively less rigid
but short period starting in the mid-1950s. Ehrenburg's connections to the
top of the Soviet political hierarchy were exceptionally good and just
before Stalin's death rumors spread in Moscow that the writer Ilya Ehrenburg
had been picked to deliver a petition to Stalin begging him to let Russia's
Jews emigrate to Siberia. Behind the scenes, Stalin planned to launch
another purge and use Jewish doctors and their absurdly invented "crimes" as
an alibi.
The title of Ehrenburg's famous novel OTTEPEL (1954-56, The Thaw, also: A
Change of Season) referred to the period after Stalin's death and the mild
de-Stalinization program of Nikita Khrushchev, who was the secretary general
of the Communist Party from 1953 to 1964. The novel's main character is
Dmitrii Koroteev, an engineer who is unhappily in love with Lena. She is
married to Ivan Zhuravlev, the influential director of a factory. With the
story of these three characters Ehrenburg interlinks lives of an opportunist
painter and his counterpart, an old-guard communist and a Jewish doctor.
Externally the story moves slowly, in the end Zhuravlev is called to the
capital never to return again, but the lengthy inner monologues touch in
passing with some taboo subjects of the Soviet history, including the arrest
of Koroteev's stepfather in 1936 and the anti-Semitic hysteria in the early
1950s. The book secured Ehrenburg's place among the reformers, although he
was better known for his loyalty to the Stalinist regime.
Ehrenburg received the Stalin Price in 1942 and 1948, and the International
Lenin Peace Prize in 1952. In 1946 he visited Canada and the United States,
where John Steinbeck said to him, "if you spit in the mouth of a lion, it
becomes tame." When newspapers and magazines stopped printing his writings
in 1949, Ehrenburg sent a short letter to Stalin. The ban was lifted, and he
continued his travels in different parts of the world. In China he was
astonished by the discipline of the people. He met Pablo Neruda in 1954 in
Chile, and in Japan he felt that Kipling's famous lines, "Oh, East is East,
and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," are not only wrong but
dangerous. Ehrenburg was the Vice President of World Peace Council (1950-67)
and a Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from 1950. Ehrenburg died in
Moscow on August 31, 1967. The last years of his life Ehrenburg devoted to
his memoirs, People, Years, Life, which portrayed a number of famous writers
and artists he had known. He also campaigned to have published works by
writers who had earlier been politically condemned by the regime.
For further reading: Il'ia Erenburg by T. Trifonova (1954); History of
Soviet Literature by V. Alexandrova (1963); Ilya Ehrenburg by Anatol
Goldberg (1984); Il'ia Erenburg by Aleksandr Rubashkin (1990); Ehrenburg by
Michael Klimenko (1990); Ilya Ehrenburg by Julian L. Laychuk (1991); Il'ia
Erenburg by Viacheslav Popov (1993); Tangled Loyalties by Joshua Rubenstein
(1996) - Suom.: Ehrenburgilta on myös suomennettu Tsehovia lukiessa, Venäjä
sodassa ja Toinen päivä.- See also: Octavio Paz
Selected works:
STIKHI, 1910
IA ZHIVU. STIKHI, 1911
ODUVANCHIKI, 1912
BUDNI, 1913
POETY FRANTSII, 1870-1913: PEREVODY, 1914
DETSKOE, 1914
POVEST O ZHIZNI NEKOY NADENKI I O VESHCHIKH ZNAMENIYAKH, YAVLENNYKH EY, 1916
O ZHILETE SEMYONA DROZDA, 1917
MOLITVA O ROSSII, 1918
OGON, 1919
V ZVEZDAKH, 1919
LIK VOYNY, 1920
RAZDUMYA, 1921
KANUNY, 1921
NEOBYCHAYNYYE KHOZHDENIYA KHULIO KHURENITO I YEGO UCHENIKOV, 1922 - The
Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His Disciples - Julio
Jurenito
ZOLOTOE SERDTSE, 1922
PORTRETY RUSSKIKH POETOV, 1922
OPUSTOSHAIUSHCHAIA LIUBOV, 1922
ZARUBEZHNYE RAZDUMYA, 1922
VETER, TRAGEDIA, 1922
MOSKIVSKIE RAZDUMYA, 1922
A VSYO-TAKI ONA VERTITSYA, 1922
TREST D.E., 1923
CHETYRE POVESTI O LYOGKIKH KONTSAKH, 1923
OTRECHENNYE, 1923
ZVERINOE TEPLO, 1923
TRINADTSAT TRUBOK, 1923
ZHIZN I GIBEL NIKOLAYA KURBOVA, 1923
LIUBOV' ZHANNY NEI, 1924 - The Love of Jeanne Ney
TRUBKA, 1924
RVACH, 1925
NEPRAVDOPODOBNYE ISTORII, 1925
LETO 1925 GODA, 1926
USLOVNYE STRADANIA ZAVSEGDATAYA KAFE, 1926
V PROTOCHNOM PEREULKE, 1927 - A Street in Moscow
BELY UGOL, 1928
BURNAIA ZHIZN' LAZIKA ROITSHVANETSA, 1928 - The Stormy Life of Lazar
Roitschwantz
POLNOE SOBRANIE SOCHINENII, 1927-28 (8 vols.)
ZAGOVOR RAVNYKH, 1928
VIZA VREMENI, 1929
DESIAT' LOSHADINYKH SIL, 1929 - The Life of the Automobile
EDINY FRONT, 1930
MY I ONI, 1931
FABRIKA SNOV, 1931
ISPANIA, 1933
MOSKVA SLYOZAM NE VERIT, 1933
MOY PARIZH, 1933
DEN' VTOROI, 1934 - Out of Chaos
ZATYANUVSHAYASYA RAZVYAZKA, 1934
KHRONIKA NASHIKH DNEY, 1935
KNIGA DLYA VZROSLYKH, 1936
CHETYRE TRUBKI, 1936
GRANITSY NOCHI, 1936
CHTO CHELOVEKU NADO, 1937
NO PARASAN, 1937
VNE PEREMIRIA, 1937
ISPANSKI ZAKAL, 1938
PADENIYE PARIZHA, 1941 - The Fall of Paris - Pariisin kukistuminen (Stalin
Prize)
VERNOST, 1941
BESHENYE VOLKI, 1941
FASHISTSKIE MRAKOBESY, 1941
PADENIE PARIZHA, 1942
ZA ZHIZN, 1942
OZHESTOCHENIE, 1942
SOLNTSEVOROT, 1942
STIKHI O VOINE, 1943
SVOBODA, POEMY, 1943
PADENIE DUCHE, 1943
VOYNA, IYUL 1941-APREL 1942, 1943 - Russia at War
RASSKAZY ETIKH LET, 1944
DEREVO, 1946
DOROGI EVROPY, 1946 - Europena Crossroad
BURYA, 1946-47 - The Strom (Stalin Prize)
LEV NA PLOSHCHADI, KOMEDIA, 1947
ZA MIR, 1950
NADEZHDA MIRA, 1950
DEVYATY VAL, 1951-52 - The Ninth Wave
SOCHINENIA, 1952-54 (5 vols.)
LYUDI KHOTYAT ZHIT, 1953
VOLYA NARODOV, 1953
O RABOTE PISATELYA, 1954 - The Writer and His Craft
OTTEPEL', 1954 - The Thaw / A Change of Season - Suojasää
SOVEST NARODOV, 1956
FREDERIK ZHOLIO-KYURI, 1958
FRANTSUZSKIE TETRADI, 1958
INDIYSKIE VPECHATLENIA, YAPONSKIE ZAMETKI, RAZMYSHLENIA V GRETSII, 1958
STIKHI, 1959
PERECHITYVAIA CHEKHOVA, 1960
KAREL PURKINE, 1960
PERECHITYVAYA CHEKHOVA, 1960 - Chekhov, Stendhal, and Other Essays
LYUDI, GODY, ZHIZN, 1960-65 (6 vols.) - People, Years, Life - Ihmisiä,
vuosia, elämää
SOBRANIE SOCHINENII, 1962-66 (9 vols.)
YA ZHIVU, STIKHI, 1971
STIKHOTVORENIA, 1972
LETOPIS MUZHESTVA, 1974
CHERNAIA KNIGA, 1980 - The Black Book
In One Newspaper. A Chronicle of Unforgettable Years, by Ilya Ehrenburg and
Konstantin Simonov (1986)
V SMERTNYI CHAS, 1996
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 Institute for Historical Review
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p507_Weber.html
Historical News and Comment
The Strange Life of Ilya Ehrenburg
Mark Weber
Ilya Ehrenburg, the leading Soviet propagandist of the Second World War, was
a contradictory figure.
A recent article in the weekly Canadian Jewish News sheds new light on the
life of this "man of a thousand masks." [1]
Ehrenburg was born in 1891 in Kiev to a non-religious Jewish family. In 1908
he fled Tsarist Russia because of his revolutionary activities.
Although he returned to visit after the Bolshevik revolution, he continued
to live abroad, including many years in Paris, and did not settle in the
Soviet Union until 1941.
A prolific writer, Ehrenburg was the author of almost 30 books. The central
figure of one novel, The Stormy Life of Lazik Roitschwantz, is a pathetic
"luftmensch," a recurring character in Jewish literature who seems to live
"from the air" without visible means of support .
As a Jew and a dedicated Communist, Ehrenburg was a relentless enemy of
German National Socialism. During the Second World War, he was a leading
member of the Soviet-sponsored Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.
(At fund-raising rallies in the United States for the Soviet war effort, two
leading members of the Committee displayed bars of soap allegedly
manufactured by the Germans from the corpses of murdered Jews.)
Ehrenburg is perhaps most infamous for his viciously anti-German wartime
propaganda. In the words of the Canadian Jewish News: "As the leading Soviet
journalist during World War II, Ehrenburg's writings against the German
invaders were circulated among millions of Soviet soldiers."
His articles appeared regularly in Pravda, Izvestia, the Soviet military
daily, Krasnaya Zvezda ("Red Star"), and in numerous leaflets distributed to
troops at the front.
In one leaflet headlined "Kill," Ehrenburg incited Soviet soldiers to treat
Germans as sub-human. The final paragraph concludes:
The Germans are not human beings. From now on the word German means to use
the most terrible oath. From now on the word German strikes us to the quick.
We shall not speak any more. We shall not get excited. We shall kill. If you
have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day ... If
you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet. If
there is calm on your part of the front, or if you are waiting for the
fighting, kill a German in the meantime. If you leave a German alive, the
German will hang a Russian and rape a Russian woman. If you kill one German,
kill another -- there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German
corpses. Do not count days, do not count kilometers. Count only the number
of Germans killed by you. Kill the German -- that is your grandmother's
request. Kill the German -- that is your child's prayer. Kill the German --
that is your motherland's loud request. Do not miss. Do not let through.
Kill. [2]
Ehrenburg's incendiary writings certainly contributed in no small measure to
the orgy of murder and rape by Soviet soldiers against German civilians.
Until his death in 1967, "his support for the Soviet state, and for Stalin,
never wavered," the Canadian Jewish News notes. His loyalty and service were
acknowledged in 1952 when he received the Stalin Prize.
In keeping with official Soviet policy, he publicly criticized Israel and
Zionism.
The Canadian Jewish News further writes:
... the recent disclosure that Ehrenburg arranged to transfer his private
archives to Jerusalem's Yad Vashem library and archive, while still alive,
comes as a stunning revelation.
The reason this information has come to light only now is that Ehrenburg
agreed to transfer his archive on condition that the transfer, and his will,
remain secret for 20 years after his death.
On Dec. 11 [1987], wit the 20-year period expired, Israel's daily Maariv
related Ehrenburg's story ... "
The collection includes material about the important wartime Jewish partisan
movement Among the documents in the collection is one concerning a pogrom in
Malalchovka, a village near Moscow, which took place in 1959.
This new revelation about one of the most influential figures of Me
Stalinist regime shows that, whatever he may have said for public
consumption, Ehrenburg never privately disavowed Zionism or ever forgot his
ancestry.
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Notes
[1] Rose Kleiner, "Archives to throw new light on Ehrenburg," Canadian
Jewish News (Toronto), 17 March 1988, p. 9.
[2] Alfred de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam (London: Roudedge & Kegan Paul, 2nd
edition, 1979), pp. 6546, 201; and, Erich Kern (ed.), Verheimlichte
Dokumente (Munich: FZ- Verlag, 1988), pp. 260-61, 353-55.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Source: Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 8, no. 4, pp.
507-509.
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© 2000 
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x06/xm0684.html
Russian Jewish writer and journalist
Ehrenburg lived abroad for many years, mostly in Paris, and was a foreign
correspondent for Soviet newspapers. After the German invasion of France in
1940, he returned to the Soviet Union. Although Ehrenburg was an assimilated
Jew and was steeped in Russian culture, his writings often dealt with Jewish
subjects. During World War II he became increasingly conscious of his Jewish
identity and expressed these feelings in his publications. In Padenie
Parizha (The Fall of Paris; 1941) he denounced fascism and antisemitism, and
in a poem written in 1940 he lamented the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
During the war years he was a correspondent for Krasnaia Zvezda (Red Star),
the newspaper of the Red Army, and played a leading role in anti - Nazi
propaganda in the Soviet Union and abroad.
The Anti - Fascist Committee
Ehrenburg was one of the most prominent personalities to be appointed to the
Jewish antifascist committee. In the committee's meetings and consultations
he stressed the need to publicize the Jewish role in the war effort against
the Nazis, and openly criticized manifestations of antisemitism among the
Soviet population. He was one of the first in the Soviet Union to encourage
the collection of documentary evidence on the murder of the Jews and on
active Jewish resistance to the Nazis. Ehrenburg was the editor of Merder
fun Felker (Murderers of Peoples; 2 vols., 1944 - 1945). Together with
Vasily Grossman, he edited Chernaya Kniga (The Black Book of Soviet Jewry),
a collection of documents on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. He also
co-sponsored Krasnaya Kniga (The Red Book), which documented Jewish
participation in the Red Army, the partisan movement, and the resistance to
the Nazis in the ghettos. These books, however, were not released for
publication, since it became Soviet policy to throw a veil over the
Holocaust, a policy that became increasingly pronounced after the war. In
the spring of 1945, official criticism was voiced against Ehrenburg's
extreme anti-German stand.
Postwar
The fate of the Jews during the war continued to preoccupy Ehrenburg in the
postwar years. An abridged English translation of Chernaya kniga was
published in New York in 1946, and the full version (which was smuggled out
of the USSR), in 1980. Six volumes of his memoirs were serialized in the
journal Novyi Mir between 1960 and 1965 under the title Lyudi, Gody, Zhizn
(Men, Years, Life); at his death he was working on the concluding volumes.
Ehrenburg bequeathed his entire archive to Yad Vashem, including a complete,
uncensored edition of Chernaya Kniga and many personal letters from
survivors.
Courtesy of:
"Encyclopedia of the Holocaust"
©1990 Macmillan Publishing Company
New York, NY 10022

 
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/eburg.htm
Ecco per chi fai il tifo:
Ad'I
È stato arrestato dalla polizia canadese
 il Criminale di guerra Saifert Michael di nazionalità ucraina nato il 16/
 03/. 1924
 Il Saifert e condannato dal Tribunale Militare di Verona alla pena
 dell'egastolo per il reato di:
 Per aver in concorso con altri durante il servizio prestato nelle forze
 armate tedesche, nemiche dello stato italiano con il grado di Gefreiter o
 (Rottenführer) delle SS svolgendo le funzioni di addetto alla vigilanza del
 campo di concentramento di transito di Bolzano tra il dicembre 1944 e
 l'aprile del 1945, con altri e senza giustificato motivo, cagionava la
 morte di numerose persone almeno 18 che si trovavano prigioniere nel campo
 di Bolzano, adoperando sevizie nei loro confronti con crudeltà e
 premeditazione.
Alcuni esempi:
 A) nel febbraio '45 torturava un prigioniero anche col il fuoco
cagionandoli
 la morte
 B) Torturava una giovane ebrea infierendo sul corpo con bottiglie spezzate
 C) Torturava e uccideva una prigioniera di 17 anni bastonandola e versando
 acqua ghiacciata
 D) Nella notte di Pasqua 1 Aprile 1945 dopo aver inflitto violente
 bastonature al giovane prigioniero Pezzutti Bortolo lo uccideva
 squarciandogli il ventre
 E) Tra il 1° e il 15 gennaio 1945 uccideva, nelle celle di isolamento del
 Lager in concorso con altri la prigioniera Leoni Giulia in Voghera, ebrea,
e
 la figlia di costei, Voghera augusta in Menasse, torturandole per circa due
 ore versando addosso acqua gelate ed infine strangolandole.
Il Saifert è stato condannato in contumacia il 22 febbraio 2001 cinquanta
 sei anni dopo i delitti non ha mai fatto un giorno di prigione fino ad
oggi.