This is indeed, as the eminent historian Zvi Gitelman advises us in his foreword, an unusual book. It tells the story of the postwar journey in summer 1947 of Pinkhas Kaganovich (1884–1950), who wrote in Yiddish under the pseudonym of Der Nister (the hidden one). Der Nister travelled on a train of Holocaust survivors to the Far East region of Birobidzhan, shortly before he was arrested, along with other prominent Yiddish writers, and finally died in a prison camp hospital, one of the victims of Stalin's attempt to repress Jewish identity in all its forms. Having returned to Soviet Russia in 1925, as did other Jewish writers who believed that only in the new socialist society could Yiddish literature flourish, Der Nister continued to compose his fantastic stories and novels that explored Jewish mysticism and family life without conforming to Socialist Realism. He was a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which served the Soviet war effort against Nazi Germany, the sole representative body of Soviet Jewry, but which Stalin dissolved after the war. In that brief interval between the Holocaust and the murder of Solomon Mikhoels in 1948, which marked the beginning of Soviet Jewry's Black Years, Der Nister apparently believed that there was hope for reconstructing Russian Jewry. His much publicized voyage to Birobidjan, the nominal Jewish autonomous republic (which was neither autonomous nor a republic), gave expression to that hope, in the absence of any other imaginable future for Soviet Jewry after the extermination of a large part of the Jewish population of Russia and Ukraine, and when no other nation yet recognized the need for a Jewish territory.

We may think Der Nister naïve, or even blind not to see what was coming, but Ber Kotlerman tells the story with great sympathy for the man whom Soviet Jews saw as a leading cultural figure, but was accused on false charges by the Soviet secret police of using his trip to Birobidjan to promote Jewish “nationalism” and to engage in anti-Soviet activities. We now understand that these fabricated charges were part of an anti-Semitic campaign that ended only with Stalin's death in 1953; the surviving prisoners were rehabilitated in 1956. Kotlerman, whose own family was among the refugees who moved to Birobidjan after the Holocaust, reconstructs how Der Nister conceived his mission to the Jews of Birobidjan using the writer's travelogue, press coverage, reminiscences, and memoirs, but also transcripts of MGB (Ministerstvo gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti) interrogations and court proceedings (reproduced with English translation in the book's appendices).

We should not underestimate the desperate hope of the Jewish migrants who traveled with Der Nister on that refugee train, so soon after they had lost their families and homes. A wedding on the train symbolized the bitter joy of Jews who had nothing to look forward to beyond starting new lives in Birobidjan. The resettlement of homeless Jews and former kolkhozniks from southern Ukraine and Crimea was officially sanctioned, but the plan was halted in 1950. These refugees, including many child orphans, were the remnants fleeing continued anti-Semitism who only wanted to be among other Jews. Der Nister, who had previously not shown support for the Birobidjan project, saw himself in the position of the time-honored shtadlan, who supported his people in their distress and intervened with the authorities on their behalf. For example, he lobbied for Yiddish-language schooling, in the face of opposition from local authorities. At a Passover seder he regaled his listeners with Hasidic tales, quoting Rabbi Nakhman of Bratslav by heart, and in general boosted their morale. They were united by the spirit of the partisans and when they sang Hirsh Glik's Zog nit keynmol, many remembered their traumatic experiences in the ghettos. In retrospect, his efforts seem ineffective, but we cannot help admiring the courage and integrity of Der Nister, who was ill and depressed after the death of his daughter in the siege of Leningrad. Unfortunately for him and for us, he lived in times that were not opportune for Jewish life and culture. But he understood the critical juncture at which the Jewish people stood, poised between endless wandering in exile and a historical turning point on the eve of the declaration of the state of Israel. The migrant train was for him a kind of Noah's ark rescued from cataclysmic destruction and, Der Nister optimistically believed, it was headed for the repair of the “broken whole” of the Jewish collective. As Kotlerman shows, however, such a messianic scheme was quite out of place at that time.

Kotlerman is an intrepid investigator, who has turned up much archival material, as well as discovering Der Nister's grave. He writes with deep knowledge of Yiddish literature and Jewish sources and understands the complex hybridity of Soviet Jewish identity from the inside. His important and innovative book deserves scholarly attention and will hopefully renew interest in one of the most gifted and intriguing Soviet Yiddish writers.