ABSTRACT
During the Great Patriotic War, Peretz Markish wielded considerable cultural authority. From 1939 to 1943 he served as the chair of the Yiddish section of the Soviet Writers’ Union, the body that oversaw all writing and writers in the country, and he was a member of the board of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, created in summer 1941 to rally international Jewry to support the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany. He, along with David Bergelson, was one of the most widely known Yiddish writers in the country. In The Heap , Markish describes the destroyed Jewish community of Ukraine as a pile of rotting corpses. By opening his first Eynikayt essay with Hitler’s own words, at once ridiculous and haunting, Markish told his readers that the Soviet Union was up against an enemy with an irrational fear and hatred of Jews.
