biography of lazar kaganovich a nice read from a fascinating book for those who deny kaganovich is one of the worst mass murderers in history and edit it my post defending him maybe some information can be added to the page lazar kaganovich one of the bloodiest of the communist butchers during the s and s and the number two man in the kremlin for many years the book is the wolf of the kremlin and it was written by stuart kahan an american jew who is kaganovich's nephew kahan went to the soviet union in and interviewed his uncle extensively in yiddish to write this biography and it is a goldmine of revelations to sum it up lazar kaganovich was a jew raised in the jewish tradition a yeshiva boy taught to guide himself on the basis of doing always what is best for the jews and this precept actually is cited explicitly several times in the book he attended his first communist party meeting in when he was to hear the jewish communist trotsky give a speech in a synagogue in kiev that's right in a synagogue he rose rapidly in the inner circle of the communist party his success was due primarily to his aggressiveness and his ruthlessness in his communist activity he held back from nothing no matter how brutal or bloody he even killed his fellow jews when they got in his way he was a gangster among gangsters in kaganovich organized a special department of the soviet secret police with himself as the head it was referred to as the department of wet affairs with wet meaning bloody that is it handled clandestine mass executions of the sort carried out later at vinnitsa in ukraine and at katyn in russia and at a thousand other places throughout the soviet union over the next two decades kaganovich became the commissar in charge of mass murder yet when the german army invaded the soviet union in it was kaganovich who was the savior of the jews he arranged for the evacuation of all jews from the frontier areas and their resettlement far to the east where they would be safe from the germans let the ukrainians and the russians bear the brunt of the german invasion but protect the jews from hardship and danger at any cost when the gentile communist nikita khruschev accused kaganovich in at a soviet party congress of having murdered million russians during his career kaganovich didn't even deny it he only accused khruschev of being a murderer too your hands are blood stained too kaganovich told him khruschev pointed out that the difference was that he khruschev had merely followed kaganovich's orders while it had been kaganovich who had formulated the policies of mass murder and had given the orders for carrying out those policies as i said it's a fascinating book this biography of lazar kaganovich and if you really want to gain some insight into his mentality you should read it for yourself kaganovich wants to boast about the power he once held and at the same time he wants to evade responsibility for his crimes and one can see this ambivalent attitude throughout the book yours