HOW CAN WE "RECONCILE" COMMUNIST AND NAZI LEGACIES?
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concentrated in the period between 1950 and 1956, its legacies of ac–
ceptable doctrine and careers made and destroyed set the terms of East
German anti-fascism until the regime collapsed in the peaceful upheavals
of 1989-90. The essentials of the story are the following. In 1950, Paul
Merker was expelled from the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity
Party
(Sozialistische Einheitspartel)
or SED as a result of his wartime con–
tact with Noel Field, said to be an American agent. Immediately follow–
ing the executions of eleven of fourteen defendants in the Slansky Trial
in Prague in November 1952, Merker was arrested and charged with be–
ing a member of an international conspiracy of American imperialists,
capitalists, and Zionist agents. One of those executed in Prague was
Otto Katz, who had been a friend of Merker's in Mexico City. The
goal of the conspiracy was said to be the destruction of Communism in
Europe through the actions ofleading, mostly Jewish, Communist Party
officials working with foreign agents . In 1949 and 1950, Zuckermann
had been Chief of Staff in the office of Wilhelm Pieck, then the Presi–
dent of the German Democratic Republic. In 1950, in the wake of the
Noel Field accusations, he had resigned under pressure. Ten days after
Merker was arrested, Leo Zuckermann fled to West Berlin because he
correctly assumed that he was about to be arrested by the
Stasi .
In December 1952, the SED Central Committee also demanded of
the leaders of the organized Jewish communities in East Germany that
they publicly denounce the Joint Distribution Committee as an espi–
onage outfit; equate Zionism with fascism; describe American justice as
criminal because of the Rosenberg case; state that West German restitu–
tion payments amounted to exploitation of the German people; and at–
tack the West German agreements with Israel. Julius Meyer, the leader of
the Jewish Community in Berlin, and four other leaders ofJewish com–
munities, fooled East German authorities into thinking they would sign
the statement, then fled to West Berlin. In December-January of 1952-
53, one third of the Jewish community in East Germany fled to the
West. In January 1953, Meyer said that the East German Jewish leaders
decided to do so out of fear of a repetition of the November pogrom
of1938.
In winter 1952-53 at the very latest, it was clear to everyone in–
volved in East German politics that the regime was going to enact poli–
cies hostile to the state of Israel and to the interests ofJews within Ger–
many. With the
Stasi
files of Merker, Zuckermann, and Alexander
Abusch, the editor of
Freies Deutschland
in Mexico City, and future Min–
ister of Culture in East Germany, we now have important details of the
inner history of the anti-cosmopolitan purge. The files include transcripts
