Jewish Leftists in Portrait: Resisters, Intellectuals, Activists

The fourth volume of the book series "Jews in the International Left" once again presents well-known and lesser-known figures who shaped Jewish history and leftist movements.

Edited by Riccardo Altieri, Bernd Hüttner, and Florian Weis under the umbrella of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which is affiliated with the German Left Party (Die Linke), the Jews in the International Left series has become an important collection on the intersections of Jewish history and leftist movements in recent years. While the first volume (2021) focused on the long-standing alliance between the Jewish emancipation movement and the workers’ movement, the subsequent volumes (2022 and 2023) examined specific political currents and geographical contexts—ranging from the Weimar Republic to Sephardic and Mizrahi perspectives in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa.

The fourth volume, "Zog nit keyn mol, az du geyst dem letstn veg. Mir zaynen do!", published in October 2024, focuses on Jewish-leftist intellectuals in the GDR and Jewish military resistance against National Socialism. It introduces both well-known and lesser-known Jewish leftists. More than in previous volumes, the three editors are not only driven by an interest in historical retrospection but also by reflections on contemporary debates within leftist movements, particularly in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza and Israel’s border regions.

In their introduction, the editors address this current political context, highlighting how the relationship between Jewish movements and the Left is being challenged by new lines of conflict. They critically examine both the growing antisemitism within leftist movements and political measures against pro-Palestinian protests. A particular focus is placed on the ambivalence of the German Left: while it is generally more empathetic toward Jewish perspectives than its counterparts in the U.S. or the U.K., significant divisions remain.

The historical alliance between Jews and the socialist movement has eroded over decades, particularly due to the political shift to the right in Israel and a new form of antisemitism emerging from academic leftist circles. Addressing this historically and educationally is certainly one of the objectives of this ambitious book series, which is set to conclude in 2025 with a fifth and final volume.

The 150-page anthology contains 18 contributions, including two interviews that frame the volume.

Moses Hess and the Socialist Movement

In the opening chapter, then-incumbent Thuringian Left Party Minister-President Bodo Ramelow reflects on the political philosophy of Moses Hess (1812–1875) and his significance for the early socialist movement. Hess, derisively called the "Communist Rabbi," combined Marxist thought with Jewish identity and contributed to the development of socialist Zionism. Ramelow highlights the historical role of the Jewish labor movement and criticizes antisemitism in both right-wing and left-wing movements.

This is further elaborated in the following contribution by Hella Hertzfeldt. Her analysis centers on Hess’s works Die europäische Triarchie (1841) and Rome and Jerusalem (1862). Hertzfeldt illustrates how Hess was initially active in the revolutionary movement before distancing himself from Marx and Engels and advocating for a Jewish national renewal. Readers interested in more insights into Hess’s political life and excerpts from his works may refer to Mario Keßler’s book Socialists Against Antisemitism: On Jewish Hatred and Its Opposition (1844–1939), published by the Hamburg-based VSA-Verlag, which was reviewed in January 2023.

Jewish Identity and Resistance Through Music

The concluding interview features the Viennese singer and activist Isabel Frey, who discusses the significance of Doikayt ("hereness") and Yiddishkayt as political and cultural concepts of the Jewish-leftist tradition. As a singer engaged in Yiddish music and Jewish-leftist traditions, Frey connects Yiddishkayt (Jewish culture) with political activism. She performs songs from the socialist labor movement, including revolutionary Yiddish songs that were sung during pogroms, in resistance against the Nazis, or in leftist trade unions.

Frey emphasizes that Yiddish is, in many ways, a language of resistance. While Hebrew was established as the national language in Israel, Yiddish remained the language of the Jewish labor movement, the diaspora, and leftist resistance. Many of the songs she interprets stem from this tradition. By arguing that Jewish identity does not necessarily have to be tied to religion or the state of Israel but can instead represent a political and cultural identity rooted in the tradition of Jewish socialism, Frey builds a bridge from historical analysis to contemporary and future perspectives.

Jewish Intellectuals in the GDR

About half of the contributions focus on Jewish intellectuals in the GDR. Several notable publications on this topic have appeared in recent years, such as the 2021 portrait volume Jews in the GDR: Being Jewish Between Adaptation, Dissent, Illusions, and Repression, edited by Anetta Kahane and Martin Jander and published by Hentrich & Hentrich (Berlin and Leipzig), or the publication Contradictory New Beginnings: East German-Jewish Stories After 1945, edited by Peter Reif-Spirek and Annette Leo for the Thuringian State Center for Political Education. Both I reviewed 2022 and 2023 alongside the volumes of the Jews in the International Left series that were published in those years.

In his contribution Jewish Intellectuals in the GDR, Mario Keßler examines the tension between "A New Beginning in Socialism or a New Beginning Outside the GDR." Keßler argues that many Jewish leftists moved to the GDR after 1945 out of an antifascist impulse. However, the Slánský Trials (1952) and the creeping antisemitism within the Socialist Unity Party (SED) led many to leave the country or become marginalized.

In Jews in the GDR, Regina Scheer previously portrayed Hertha (Gordon) Walcher (1894–1990) in a compelling article titled Between the Chairs. Walcher’s political life was shaped by the divisions and, under Stalinism, even life-threatening dogmas of the communist movement. Expelled from the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) for "right-wing deviation," she joined the Communist Party Opposition (KPD-O) and later the left-socialist Socialist Workers' Party (SAP), working in its exile office in Paris. As a result, she was expelled from the SED in the GDR—only Wilhelm Pieck prevented worse consequences. In the present anthology, Altieri provides a portrait of this socialist politician with Jewish roots.

The GDR presented itself as an antifascist state where Jewish citizens were not only protected but also integrated as part of the socialist project. Nevertheless, the role of Jewish identity remained ambivalent: while some Jewish intellectuals deliberately positioned themselves as leftists and antifascists without emphasizing their Jewish heritage, others sought to connect Jewish memory and identity with socialist ideology.

Individual portraits of actress Helene Weigel, filmmaker Konrad Wolf (namesake of the Babelsberg Film University), and the four writers Anna Seghers, Stefan Heym, Stephan Hermlin, and Jurek Becker create a compelling panorama. Jewish identity was addressed and negotiated in GDR culture in very different ways.

Jewish Resistance

Four additional contributions focus on Jewish resistance against National Socialism in various contexts: the Warsaw Ghetto, the underground movement in Minsk, resistance from the kibbutz, and the Herbert Baum Group in Germany. Collectively, they demonstrate that Jewish resistance cannot be reduced to heroic individual acts but existed in diverse forms—military, cultural, political, and intellectual.

While dominant historical narratives long emphasized Jewish passivity, these contributions highlight that many Jews actively resisted the Nazi extermination policy—often under extremely difficult conditions and with minimal chances of success. In doing so, they contribute to dismantling the myth of the supposedly passive Jewish victim.

For both Holocaust survivors and later generations of Jews, the Shoah is not only linked to an existential trauma but also represents a profound religious, theological, and philosophical challenge. Can one still speak of God after the mass murder of European Jewry? The German philosopher and liberal rabbi Emil Fackenheim introduced the idea of a 614th commandment, which he argued should be added to the 613 traditional commandments of the Torah. This commandment states: “Jews are forbidden to grant Hitler posthumous victories. They are commanded to survive as Jews so that the Jewish people do not perish.”

In this interpretation, the Shoah marks a new era of Judaism in which Jewish life itself becomes an intrinsic value of the highest priority. Drawing from the testimonies of Holocaust survivors, Fackenheim concluded that Jewish life in the death camps ultimately manifested only as resistance against annihilation—through the preservation of Jewish dignity and the effort not to let this dignity be broken. In this sense, and in connection with Isabel Frey’s reflections, these four contributions stand out as particularly significant in this fourth volume.

Gertrud Pickhan portrays the Jewish socialist organization Bund and its central role in organizing resistance, where Jewish fighters held their ground against the Wehrmacht and the SS in an almost hopeless struggle, becoming a symbol of Jewish self-assertion.

Hersz Smolar (1905–1993) was a key chronicler and organizer of Jewish resistance in the Minsk Ghetto, which became one of the most active centers of underground resistance during the Holocaust. Smolar survived the war and later documented Jewish resistance efforts. His writings remain one of the most important sources on resistance organization within the ghettos.

While Pickhan examines ghetto resistance in Warsaw and Vilnius, Mario Keßler expands the perspective by focusing on Minsk. Both cases make clear that Jewish resistance was not merely spontaneous but strategically organized.

Angelika Nguyen explores Jewish underground work in Western Europe through the case of Zofia Poznańska (1906–1942). Poznańska was a Polish-Jewish communist who joined the Red Orchestra resistance network and fought against the German occupation in Belgium. Her resistance was shaped by her background in the socialist-Zionist youth movement.

The Herbert Baum Group was arguably the most significant Jewish resistance group within Nazi Germany itself. Imke Küster presents both Jewish communist Herbert Baum (1912–1942) and the resistance group that carried out a sabotage attack in 1942 against the Nazi propaganda exhibition The Soviet Paradise. The group was subsequently dismantled by the Gestapo. After 1945, Baum was celebrated as an antifascist hero in the GDR, while he remained largely forgotten in West Germany. This contribution highlights the political mechanisms of memory culture and connects directly to the discussions on Jews in the GDR.

The Diversity of Jewish Leftism

The volume also features biographical portraits that reflect the diversity of Jewish leftist engagement. These include the Auschwitz survivor Esther Bejarano, portrayed in "Never Stay Silent" (Anika Taschke), Swiss publisher and bookseller Theo Pinkus, featured in "The Red Bookworm" (Uwe Sonnenberg), and Jewish-socialist human rights lawyer Leo Zuckermann, who fled Austria to Mexico in 1938 (also by Uwe Sonnenberg). These biographies provide a personal dimension to the Doikayt concept, as discussed by Isabel Frey.

Although Zuckermann was a central figure in the Jewish-leftist exile movement, he remains largely unknown today. The reasons for this lie primarily in the dominance of European memory politics: while many Jewish leftist exiles who were active in France or the U.S. received attention in historical discourse, those who fled to Latin America often remained invisible. Additionally, Jewish socialists were marginalized within the communist-dominated culture of remembrance.

The fact that this book series by Altieri/Hüttner/Weis has consistently addressed the traditions of the non-communist, (left-)socialist labor movement across all four volumes makes it particularly valuable. Moreover, all volumes are freely available as open-access PDFs.

Riccardo Altieri/Bernd Hüttner/Florian Weis (eds.), "Zog nit keyn mol, az du geyst dem letstn veg. Mir zaynen do!" Jews in the International Left (Vol. 4), published as No. 20 in the luxemburg beiträge series by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Berlin, 2024.