ABSTRACT
At the end of November 1947 Solomon Mikhoels, the director of the Moscow Jewish Theater and chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, delivered a speech before a largely Jewish audience in the hall of the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow. Mikhoels began his speech by saying that A.A.Gromyko, the Soviet representative to the United Nations, had declared Soviet support for the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine and thus pointed out the road to the Land of Israel. The applause was deafening. When the event was reported to Stalin he at once ordered the arrest of people who directly or indirectly had connections to Mikhoels.1
