Young Zionists in the USSR in the 1920s could sometimes avoid arrest or administrative exile. As a rule, however, this required writing a letter of recantation to the press, publicly renouncing one’s views, and giving the security services the names of one’s comrades. This is precisely what can be seen in the case of Nuta Itskovich Barboy, presented in the J-Doc digital archive. Barboy, who was born in 1909, was arrested on 20 January 1928 in the shtetl of Chernevtsy, Vinnyts

The J-Doc digital archive contains a case file from the archives of the Soviet security services that reads like a political detective story and reveals the specifics of underground work carried out by youth Zionist organisations in the USSR. On 2 September 1924, the OGPU of Podolia Governorate in the Ukrainian SSR arrested a young man who, at the time of his detention, gave his name as Zeilik Rudin. Only during the third interrogation did the accused admit that the documents

March 1946. A small Ukrainian railway station. On the platform, a former inmate of a Nazi camp sees a man in whom he recognises “Solomon the interpreter,” who had tormented prisoners. He reports the traitor to a railway police officer. This opening, entirely worthy of a Hollywood film, led to the opening of the Solomon Sherf case file, now held in the J-Doc digital archive. On 24 March 1946, Solomon Borukhovich Sherf, a native of Chernivtsi Oblast, was arrested by the police