I have already focused on German and Polish/German “lost” Jews. The piece below focuses on Russian Jews.
“One of the most shocking observations of our post-October 7 world is that a small but very vocal minority of Jews have chosen to act as defenders for the murderers and kidnappers of our people.
Groups such as IfNotNow and Jewish Voices for Peace encourage further attacks on Israel by justifying and defending Palestinian terrorists and vilifying supporters of Israel.
They collaborate with our enemies by using their Judaism as a banner to support their anti-Israel stance. These people display external symbols of Judaism, such as wearing a kippah or a tallit. They proclaim their Jewish names and perversely use narratives of their own families’ persecution to defend the current-day persecutors of the Jews.
Sadly, they have a precedent in Jewish history, and examining one of their predecessors provides insight into their inevitable downfall.
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Zinoviev, raised Hirsh Apfelbaum (1883-1936), was one of the top three members of the Communist Party. Although he is not as well-known as his contemporary Leon Trotsky, he was a major power player in the Communist movement. He was one of Vladimir Lenin’s closest associates, and used his talents as an orator to support the revolution within the Soviet Union and abroad.
In fact, when Lenin was unwell at the end of his life and could not deliver the Central Committee’s reports to the 12th and 13th Party Congresses (the equivalent of the US State of the Union Address), Zinoviev was appointed to speak in his place.
During Lenin’s final illness, Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and Joseph Stalin formed the Troika, taking over the rulership of the Communist Party. According to Trotsky, Stalin’s appointment as Lenin’s successor was due to Zinoviev’s initial recommendation.
Zinoviev spent his life building the regime that would utterly destroy the Soviet Jewish community.
As far as his fellow Jews, Zinoviev did not use his influence to help them. He spent his life building the regime that would utterly destroy the Soviet Jewish community.
Yet, for all of his devotion to the cause and his role in giving Stalin the leadership position, his idealism would reveal itself to be naive. At the end of the day, as far as the enemies of the Jews were concerned, a Jew is a Jew. Member of Troika, Lenin’s confidante orator of the Communist movement – it was all irrelevant when he was no longer needed.
The end began in 1925 when the Troika started to fall apart. With manipulations and deception, Stalin gained total control over the Soviet Union. In December 1934, Stalin had Zinoviev and Kamenev and their closest associates arrested, accusing them of murdering Sergei Mironovich Kirov. Zinoviev was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In his letters to Stalin from prison, Zinoviev still retained his loyalty to Stalin. “I... stare at your portrait in the newspapers… thinking: my dear ones, look into my heart, and surely you will see that I’m no longer your enemy, that I am yours, body and soul...”
This loyalty was misplaced. In August 1936, Zinoviev and his associates were brought to trial on new charges. Despite Stalin’s promise to spare their lives in exchange for an admission of guilt, after Zinoviev and his co-defendants were found guilty on August 24, Stalin gave orders that they be executed that very night.
The painful message of Zinoviev’s end to the Jews who support our enemies is clear. Sure, Hamas and Palestinian supporters welcome your support and will stand arm-in-arm with you as you both stand against Israel. But, as Zinoviev discovered, when they are done using you and your idealism, the antisemites will turn against you just as they fight against your Jewish brothers and sisters. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew.
But Zinoviev’s story has not ended yet.
There is another message that can be learned from Zinoviev. It is a message of hope that perhaps even people who actively endanger Jewish lives can see.
As the executors were dragging him from his jail cell to be killed, Zinoviev pleaded with them to call for Stalin, confident that Stalin would save him. Laughing in his face, they responded, “Stalin? Stalin is the one who told us to kill you!”
In his final moments, when the edifice he had spent his life building crumbled before his eyes, Zinoviev saw the truth. Facing the firing squad, he raised his hands to the heavens and shouted, “Shema Yisrael!” With his last words, he returned to his God and his people.
In his death, he demonstrated that although the Jewish soul may be muted, the spark within remains.”
https://aish.com/for-jewish-anti-semites-a-cautionary-history-lesson/?src=ac
For a more extensive account of the “outcomes” for these Jews, see for example, Stalin Against the Jews, by Arkady Vaksberg and Antonina Bouis
From Amazon:
The first full-scale account of Joseph Stalin's personal vendetta against Soviet Jews.
Drawing on newly opened archives and on his own experiences in the USSR of the early 1950s, the investigative journalist-lawyer Arkady Vaksberg reveals the genesis and evolution of the Communist leader's malevolent campaign - and the extraordinary cunning and shrewdness of his tactics. He shows us Stalin prosecuting prominent Jews in the notorious trials of the 1930s while appointing Jews as commanders of eleven out of twelve Gulags. We see the "Man of Steel" awarding the Order of Lenin to a celebrated Jew every time he launches a new anti-Semitic assault - and choosing a Jew, the infinitely hypocritical and sadistic Lazar Kaganovich, as his protege and chief hatchet-man. All this, while thousands of innocent Jewish men and women across the Soviet Union are being stripped of their jobs and property . . . arbitrarily arrested . . . summarily shot.
Vaksberg also tells of the trumped-up trial of Soviet Jewish diplomats that was ultimately abandoned after Hitler's invasion; the curious life, and death, of the Jewish Antifascist Committee; the state-ordered murder of the great actor-director Solomon Mikhoels; the plan to deport the entire Soviet Jewish population to Siberia; how Ilya Ehrenburg finally abandoned his role as a "house Jew" and dared to criticize Stalin's policies; and the infamous "Doctor's Plot" just before the dictator's death.
A fascinating, richly documented, and profoundly shocking work of twentieth-century history.