This is not 1930s Germany; it’s the Soviet Union

Let me tell you how my mom found out she was Jewish. She was 6 years old and at summer camp for the first time. During nap time, a group of kids covered her head with a blanket and began to pummel her. She jumped up to get away from them, and a boy picked up a shoe and hurled it, screaming, “Dirty Jew!” It hit my mom on the head, drawing blood. As she cradled her wound, she made a note to ask her parents what a Jew was. This was the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

While many of my American Jewish friends are bewildered by the eruption of antisemitism masquerading as “anti-Zionism” since October 7, those of us who grew up in the Soviet Union are not confused. We have seen this movie before. In fact, we have lived it.

By the time my parents were born, the recent history of Hitler and Stalin had made racial antisemitism less palatable. Religion was also outlawed, so the KGB developed a new way of channeling its animosity toward the Jews: Israel. As Dara Horn explained in her Atlantic article this month, “By the late 1960s, the KGB was pumping out enormous amounts of propaganda trumpeting a new value: anti-Zionism. Around the world, endless Soviet-sponsored publications and broadcasts proclaimed, without evidence, that Zionism is Nazism, Zionism is racism, Zionism is apartheid, Zionism is colonialism, and Zionism is genocide.” Sound familiar?

When my mom was in college, a professor asked to speak with her. She opened her grade book and showed my mom her grades. They were all As. The professor asked my mom what grade she thought she deserved for the semester. In Soviet culture, it is impolite to show too much confidence, so my mom respectfully answered, “Whatever you think I deserve.” The professor looked her in the eye and responded, “In my class, someone like you will never have an A. If you want to live in someone else’s country, you’d better learn to keep your mouth shut.” For the record, my mom, her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were all born in the Soviet Union.

I see some fellow Jews downplaying the current environment in the Diaspora. The hand-wringing is overblown, they say. It’s just college kids and keyboard warriors. There is no government-legislated persecution, they argue. This is not a path to Nuremberg laws and gas chambers. While I agree that we are unlikely to be on the road to death camps, I don’t believe the concern about the rise in antisemitism is excessive. It’s just that 1930s Germany is the wrong analogy by which to assess the situation American Jewry finds themselves in.

My parents’ generation of Soviet Jews did not fear gas chambers. As long as they kept their heads down and didn’t become dissidents (like Natan Sharansky, for example), they need not have feared imprisonment or execution. The discrimination they faced was usually of a less lethal, yet still debilitating variety. Sure, Jewish kids would sometimes get beat up by antisemitic bullies. But it wasn’t deadly and it wasn’t officially government sanctioned. Jews knew their limits in Soviet society. There was only so far a Jew could get professionally, educationally, or socially in the Soviet Union. Universities had quotas; travel visas abroad were impossible. You could be talented, hardworking, and even a loyal Communist, but first and foremost, you would always be a Jew. My mom’s bigoted professor spelled out why she was limiting my mom’s academic opportunities in explicit terms, but most teachers and employers didn’t bother. They simply did not advance Jews, and everyone knew why. This is the kind of anti-Jewish discrimination that seems sadly plausible in the near future of this country.

When an American literary magazine retracts and apologizes for publishing an essay by a left-wing Israeli, I see the Soviet Union. When artist exhibits and author panels are canceled because other intellectuals refuse to be seen with someone with a Jewish last name, née “a Zionist,” I see the Soviet Union. When Jewish college students have to choose between taking the long way to class and denouncing their Zionism to walk through the mob blocking their way, I see the Soviet Union. When college presidents can’t clearly denounce calls for genocide of Jews, despite it being obvious that such language weaponized against any other group would never be tolerated, I see the Soviet Union. When Dave Chappelle opens SNL with a monologue steeped in antisemitic tropes camouflaged as social justice, I see the Soviet Union. When polite society publicly debates whether or not Governor Josh Shapiro is too Jewish to be chosen as a VP candidate, I see the Soviet Union. When Donald Trump says that if he loses, “the Jews will have a lot to do with it,” I see the Soviet Union.

The American Jewish establishment has spent years developing mechanisms for countering antisemitism from the right. But a tsunami of such virulent antisemitism from the left, coming from the most elite echelons of society and cleverly disguised as social justice, has thrown us off balance. It is no surprise that American Jews, many of whom are descendants of Holocaust survivors, compare the current environment to early twentieth-century Europe.

It is a shame that American education seems to largely skip over the Soviet Union. When I was growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, we learned about Nazism, the Holocaust, and World War II without covering Stalin. A majority of Americans have no idea that Stalin’s regime killed more people than Hitler’s, for example. This lack of popular knowledge extends to the late Soviet era. While American Jews organized and lobbied for Soviet Jewry during Operation Exodus (a movement of which my family and I are direct beneficiaries), it is my impression that most Americans understood that the desire of Jews to leave the Soviet Union was for religious freedom, whereas most Soviet Jews were more concerned with living a life free of ethnic persecution.

It is strange for those of us from the Soviet Union to be haunted by propaganda and hatred from our birthplace: a country that no longer exists. The American portion of my childhood was blissfully unaffected by antisemitism. I never considered for a moment that my Jewish appearance or name could limit my opportunities here. I hope that in 20 years, my children will look back and say the same. But my Soviet spidey sense tells me that we must change course now, before it is too late. There is a vast space between “Globalize the Intifada” and Auschwitz, but there is no reason we have to settle for living in it.