The Erlich-Alter Case and the Solidarity Movement

Forty years ago Henryk Erlich, an internationally famous leader of the General Jewish Workers’ Bund, the Jewish socialist party in Poland, wrote these words to his family from Moscow. It was his first opportunity to write to them since his arrest in 1939 by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police (Erlich’s wife and two sons managed to escape from Nazi- and Soviet-occupied Poland and find refuge in North America in the interim). The letter turned out to be the last he was ever able to send to them. Just over two months later, on December 4, 1941, Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter, his close associate in the Bund’s leadership, were rearrested. The Soviet government maintained a grim silence about their fate for the next 14 months...