In mid-January 1951, Zinaida Khorol from Odessa was frantically searching for her son. Joseph Mikhailovich Khorol, a student at the law faculty of Odessa State University, had left home late in the evening and disappeared. The authorities did not respond to the missing person report. Only after the woman sent a telegram to the USSR Minister of State Security Abakumov requesting help finding her son, an MGB major came directly to Zinaida Khorol's apartment and informed her that there was no need to search for the boy - Joseph had been arrested. The major did not provide any precise information about her son's whereabouts, and packages were not accepted at the Odessa Internal MGB Prison.
According to the criminal case documents, Joseph Khorol was arrested on January 7, but his mother insisted on a different date - January 4, 1951. Everything indicated that the security officers decided to "marinate" the detainee in custody to immediately extract the signatures they needed from the student. Four days after his detention, on January 8, 1951, Khorol was forced to give a confession.
The MGB investigation department accused twenty-two-year-old Joseph Khorol of belonging to a Jewish "bourgeois-nationalist group" that was actively working among student youth. Khorol was one of the first to be arrested in the case of anti-Soviet law students at Odessa State University. Soon his classmates were also taken: Willy Gartsman, Leonid Monastyrsky, Aaron Flantsbaum, Albert Shneiderov, and Bernard Shchurovetsky.
Joseph Khorol was a native of Odessa. He was born in the hero city on July 23, 1929, to the family of driver Mikhail Lvovich Khorol and secretary-typist Zinaida Osipovna Yagnyatinskaya-Khorol. In 1935, his father, Mikhail Lvovich, was imprisoned for three years on economic charges. After serving his sentence, he did not return to the family, but maintained a relationship with his son and provided financial support to him and his former wife. The boy was raised by his mother and grandmother, Fanya Borisovna.
In June 1941, Joseph had just completed the fifth grade, but instead of relaxing on the Black Sea shore, he had to flee with his mother and grandmother from the German-Romanian troops advancing on Odessa. In evacuation, the family lived in Kazgorodok, Akmola region of the Kazakh SSR, where the boy went back to school.
After the liberation of Odessa, in November 1944, the family returned home. To help his mother and grandmother during the difficult post-war period, in the winter of 1945, the young man got a job at the Odessa port. He worked there doing various manual labor jobs, and when he gained experience, he mastered crane operation and equipment repair. After two years at the port, Joseph's opinion of the Soviet system became even more critical. He had observed similar outrages since childhood and certainly did not approve of them, but what was happening at the port was something completely incredible. The Odessa sea gates at that time were notorious: theft was elevated to the level of normalcy and took on an indescribably massive scale. Once, before Khorol's eyes, two managing workers stole an entire railcar of scarce steel. Another time, a whole truck of condensed milk was stolen, which never reached Odessa stores.
Joseph decided not to stay long as a crane operator. In 1948, after leaving the port and having more free time, Joseph focused on books. He not only completed the tenth grade of evening school with good marks but also enrolled in the law faculty of Odessa State University named after I.I. Mechnikov.
During the entrance exams, another distinctive feature of post-war Soviet reality emerged. Many of Joseph's friends applied to the law faculty, but none of them passed the competition. He had no doubt about their excellent preparation. The reason was whispered in university corridors: Jews were admitted to the law faculty according to a quota - no more than 12 percent.
In September 1948, student life began. At the faculty, Joseph soon became friends with Aaron Flantsbaum, Willy Gartsman, Edik Shlafshtein, Bernard Shchurovetsky, Rem Torban, Alik Shneiderov, and many others. Word by word, the students began sharing their views on Soviet reality. Among the close friends who soon became subjects in the criminal case were not only Jews. The Russian, Viktor Christo, was described in the case as an "extremely anti-Soviet student of another nationality."
Most often, the guys gathered at Willy Gartsman's and Lenya Monastyrsky's places, inviting friends with a note: "I went to a meeting of the small Sovnarkom" - almost like in Ilf and Petrov's novels. These "meetings" were typical noisy gatherings characteristic of student youth of all times and nations. While preparing for seminars or exams, playing preference or dominoes, over a cup of tea or a bottle of beer, students discussed not only legal theory or recent theater productions but also openly mocked Soviet rules. It would be strange if future lawyers didn't do this. Not everyone was accepted into the group, only like-minded individuals with whom one could talk without fear of eavesdroppers.
Despite the fact that Khorol's parents were completely non-religious, assimilated Jews, the young man felt national pride. And how could he not when his acquaintance, Tatyana Chernyakhovskaya, who had passed the entrance exams with "excellent" marks, was not being accepted to the university? How could he remain silent when talented professors Rosenthal and Elkin were declared cosmopolitans, forced to leave their department, and removed from the academic council of Odessa University?
The situation of finding work after graduation was no better. When Joseph's classmate, Fanya Fastovskaya, shared her dream with the student group - to become a prosecutor after university - she was laughed at. What prosecutor's office for a Jewish woman, when "fifth column invalids" weren't even allowed to work a couple of months until retirement in the prosecutor's office? This situation applied even to responsible positions. For Odessans, the anti-Semitic agenda of Soviet power was an open secret.
The young man, interested in history, literature, and politics, read in pre-revolutionary books that Odessa was one of the centers of world Zionism. Joseph got hold of Jabotinsky's works. And he understood that the only correct option for Soviet Jews would be to create their own state.
Some friends agreed with the law student, others argued, believing that it was still possible to reform the Soviet Union and make it suitable for people to live regardless of their nationality. But all were in solidarity that the country was not fulfilling its own laws.
Among those who influenced Khorol, the investigation documents mentioned not only his mother, Zinaida Osipovna, but also the parents of his friends. Willy Gartsman's mother, Faina Markovna, allegedly turned young people against Soviet power by telling her son and his friend – referring to Khorol – about how the Jewish population was oppressed in the Soviet Union. Gartsman's father, who managed the "Odesstoplivo" cooperative, claimed that antisemitism was remarkably toxic: even Ukrainians or Russians who tried to protect their Jewish subordinates from persecution fell under the roller of repression.
The father of his friend Aaron Flantsbaum told about the peculiar relationship of the Soviet generals with the concept of "officer's honor." According to the elder Flantsbaum, the headquarters heroes of the war, as soon as they entered the territory of Germany and Austria, immediately engaged in outrageous looting of the local population. The plundered goods were transported by army trucks and trains to their country houses near Moscow and officers' apartments.
Two weeks after his arrest, on January 17, 1951, Joseph Khorol was charged under Articles 54-10 part 2 ("anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation using religious or national prejudices of the masses") and 54-11 ("participation in a counter-revolutionary organization") of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR.
To prove the existence of a counter-revolutionary organization, rather than just a company of cheerful students, the MGB officers had to try very hard. But they found a hook. In the investigation documents, the security officers claimed that in January 1950, Khorol shared his thoughts with Willy Gartsman: the youth group should not just engage in idle talk, but proceed to real actions by finding like-minded individuals. Khorol was named one of the ringleaders of the anti-Soviet organization.
While the head of the investigation department of the MGB, Mashkov, had to work hard on Article 54-11 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, there was plenty of compromising material on Khorol to "attach" anti-Soviet propaganda charges. Joseph was indeed a bad Komsomol member. In his characterization, the secretary of the faculty's Komsomol bureau reported that agitator of the 4th group Joseph Khorol, while conducting a political briefing dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the reunification of Ukrainian lands within the USSR, deliberately read the transcript of the lecture monotonously for two hours, ambiguously interpreting some issues of Soviet construction. That's what the case materials state. And witnesses reported that during that ill-fated report, the entire audience was crying with laughter.
It gets worse. When the Komsomol organizer of the group, Pronina, complained to Khorol about the lack of time due to public work, Joseph told her that he considered the Komsomol (All-Union Leninist Young Communist League) a completely useless organization.
The Komsomol bureau tried to portray the student not only as anti-Soviet but also as a morally degraded personality: supposedly he spent all his free time playing preference, drinking, and at the races. This contrasted with the dry but at the same time quite complementary characterization given to the arrested student by the dean of the law faculty, Ivan Sereda.
At seminars on the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Khorol also expressed his attitude toward Soviet power. According to witnesses, at one of the seminar sessions, he said that the Nazi party, just like the Bolsheviks, once shouted at every corner that it was the conscious and advanced detachment of the working class.
As can be seen, the student was not characterized by caution. Rather, he showed stubbornness and confidence in his own righteousness. When Joseph's friend, Anatoly Kumko, who was also later arrested by the MGB in a parallel "student case," advised Joseph to stop his anti-Soviet conversations, he replied: "It's none of your business. I know what I'm doing."
Documents state that during one of the gatherings of the "small Sovnarkom," Khorol also commented on the events in Czechoslovakia in 1948. The law student was extremely precise in his formulations: the coup was prepared with the knowledge of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and was carried out with the help of Soviet troops that invaded across the border from the Soviet occupation zone in Austria. Immediately, someone present picked up on the topic by telling a joke about how during the oath-taking ceremony in the Polish army, an officer refused to kiss the cross, explaining that he was actually a Russian communist. Everyone laughed, and somehow the Odessa Region MGB soon became aware of Khorol's assessments and the anti-Soviet joke told in his presence.
The first denunciation of Khorol to the MGB came on May 27, 1950, from an agent codenamed Zheltkova. The agent reported that, having grown close to Khorol, she learned about his anti-Soviet and nationalistic views. Zheltkova reported that while evacuated in Kazakhstan, Joseph had been expelled from the Komsomol for nationalism, and in Odessa, he was reinstated in the organization through deception.
According to the agent's report, Khorol often expressed seditious thoughts: the party leadership of the USSR had turned into a bureaucratized elite that would be swept away by a party coup. "What kind of people's happiness are they concerned with if they keep gold cigarette cases in their pockets?" – these were his words said to the agent.
The "criminal" activities of the law student were not limited to this. While working as an agitator during elections, Khorol resorted to a trick. To blacken the position of Soviet workers, he pretended to criticize the standard of living of American workers. "Ford has 16 cars and several palaces, while an ordinary American worker can only buy one car and build a small house," – everyone listening understood what the young man was hinting at.
Based on Zheltkova's reports, in August 1950, the 5th Directorate of the MGB for the Odessa Region opened an agent case called "Players" on Khorol and his friends.
In a memorandum dated January 4, 1951, the day of the student's arrest, agent Zheltkova reported to her handler that back in the winter of 1949, in his second year, Khorol had spoken with Gartsman about joining some counter-revolutionary organization. This information was enough to start building a case against the student.
Zheltkova continued to spy on Joseph Khorol's friends who remained free. And not just friends. After Willy Gartsman's arrest, she visited his parents to "comfort" them, meticulously recording their attitude toward the youth arrests.
The law faculty student with the agent codename "Zheltkova" was not the only MGB agent in Khorol's circle. A figure in the "student case," Leonid Monastyrsky, was also a secret informant for the MGB Security Department of the Northern Black Sea Basin. His agent's codename was "Pushkarev." However, unlike Zheltkova, Monastyrsky signed the cooperation paper under duress and had no intention of informing. By characterizing Joseph Khorol and others in his reports as people loyal to Soviet power, he constantly misinformed the authorities until he was caught in his insincerity and arrested himself.
Who was agent Zheltkova? The weak link turned out to be a female classmate of the troublemakers. It all began in April 1948, when Joseph met a girl at one of the parties. Soon this friendship grew into something more. The young people began to share their most intimate thoughts with each other, and in September 1948, the girl enrolled in the same law faculty of Odessa University. She began to socialize with Joseph's friends, attend the gatherings of the "small Sovnarkom" and carefully listen to everything that was said there.
According to the criminal case documents, the memorandum compiled from the reports of the secret employee matches in its factual part with the testimony of one of the witnesses – Nineli Yakovlevna Nemirinskaya. Monastyrsky's wife, who was Nineli's classmate and knew her well, later pointed to Nemirinskaya as the "mole."
According to the criminal case, shortly before the first denunciation to the MGB, in late April 1951, Nemirinskaya approached the university's Komsomol committee secretary, Gennady Zbandut. The girl complained that Joseph Khorol, her lover, was leading a dissolute lifestyle and was in an intimate relationship with a student named Bayronas. Additionally, he was meeting at student Gartsman's apartment, where he and his friends engaged in anti-Soviet conversations. Immediately after the conversation, Zbandut relayed its contents to an Odessa UMGB officer named Smotritsky, who, by unfortunate coincidence, happened to be another suitor of Elvira Bayronas. Most likely, having made a foolish mistake, Nemirinskaya could no longer extricate herself from this situation and was forced to cooperate with the authorities.
In 1989, when Khorol's case and other "players" were being reviewed, investigators conducted interrogations of surviving witnesses. A separate request was sent from Odessa to Voroshilovgrad: to interrogate Nineli Yakovlevna Nemirinskaya, by then an honored lawyer. The leadership of the Ukrainian SSR KGB for the Voroshilovgrad Region refused their Odessa colleagues, deeming any investigative actions regarding Nemirinskaya inappropriate for operational reasons.
The case of Joseph Khorol and his accomplices was heard on November 23-26, 1951, in the Odessa Regional Court. Khorol, who had signed interrogation protocols during the preliminary investigation, retracted them by the end of the investigation. Despite pressure, including physical, he took the blame for anti-Soviet activities exclusively upon himself. And not just took it, but directly during the session stated that he was dissatisfied with the national policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet government. "There is no freedom of speech in the Soviet state, and all people's democracies are puppets of the Kremlin!" – none of those present had ever heard anything like this in the Odessa court before. Comparing the situation of Jews with the fate of repressed peoples – Kalmyks and Tatars – Khorol emphasized that no one had influenced his views. As he matured, he began to come to such conclusions on his own.
The court, after hearing the defendant's statement, considered Khorol's retraction of testimony during the session unconvincing. Joseph was sentenced to 25 years in corrective labor camps with a 5-year deprivation of rights. His "accomplices" Gartsman and Shchurovetskyy also received 25 years each. Monastyrsky, Flantsbaum, and Shneyderov "got off" with only ten years.
Immediately after the sentencing, Joseph Khorol's lawyer Vovrenyuk filed an appeal. As expected, the prosecution failed to prove the existence of a counter-revolutionary organization, so Vovrenyuk requested that the charge under Article 54-11 of the Ukrainian SSR Criminal Code be dismissed due to lack of evidence. The second article, 54-10 part 2 of the Ukrainian SSR Criminal Code, which carried the most severe punishment, should, according to the lawyer, be replaced with the lighter 54-10 part 1. The minimum punishment under this article was six months. However, the judicial panel for criminal cases rejected the appeal and left the sentence unchanged. On February 13, Khorol was transported from Odessa through Volgograd and Moscow to the MVD USSR Reglag in Vorkuta.
After Joseph's conviction, the authorities turned their attention to his mother. The Deputy Minister of the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR, Esipenko, proudly reported this to Moscow on August 13, 1951. Zinaida Osipovna was denounced as a radical Jewish nationalist by the same Zheltkova. Zinaida Khorol had also considerably annoyed local security officers by persistently knocking on the doors of high-ranking officials. In her persistence, she worked wonders, managing to get an appointment regarding Joseph's case with Beria's deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the MGB himself. She declared that if her son's case was not reviewed, she would report the arbitrary actions to Israeli newspapers. The Odessa security officers could not forgive the brave woman for this. Just six months after her son, on March 31, 1952, Zinaida Osipovna Khorol was sentenced to 25 years in labor camps and 5 years of disenfranchisement.
While in the highest security category camp in Vorkuta, Joseph Khorol continued corresponding with Nineli Nemirinskaya. In January 1953, after being released from the punishment cell where he had been placed for refusing to work, he shared his plans to escape from the camp with the girl. In his letter to Nemirinskaya dated January 28, 1953, Joseph wrote between the lines with milk – "invisible ink" – that each day in the camp posed a danger to him. Soviet citizens were expecting a war with America, and in the event of a full-scale conflict, political prisoners were allegedly planned to be immediately executed. The young man asked his beloved to send him a passport, military ID, two business trip certificates, photographs, and civilian clothes. The letter was sent from a different address in Vorkuta and signed with a different name.
Nemirinskaya did not respond to the letter. In another letter, dated May 5, 1953, Joseph again asked for the specified items. Special attention was given to documents for two people: aged 23-30 and 35-40. The prisoner also requested a tin can with a false bottom filled with honey be included in the package. Potassium cyanide or another potent poison was to be placed in the hidden compartment, which the two fugitives could use to commit suicide in case of failure. "Soon the USA will put an end to everything... we will live and work with them," – thus ends Khorol's letter from prison.
Shortly after Stalin's death, on June 13, 1953, the Judicial Panel for Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the USSR overturned the verdict in the case of Khorol and his friends, and the case was returned for further investigation from the preliminary investigation stage. Joseph was transferred from the "Rechnoy" Camp No. 6 in the Komi ASSR to the internal prison of the UMVD of the Odessa region. Soon, his five friends also found themselves back in Odessa.
At the very first interrogation on October 21, 1953, Joseph defied the investigator, refusing to answer questions until he could meet with his father. Being confident that real changes had come to the country, Khorol told the investigation that all signatures on the protocols were obtained from him illegally. After being detained at one in the morning, between January 4 and 5, 1951, he was left without food, water, and sleep for four days. This tactic continued until the end of the investigation. The protocols were typically backdated. In reality, they were the product of 7-8 night interrogations, which were prohibited by law. Additionally, investigators Mashkov and Cherkasov threatened the young man, saying that refusing to sign the documents would inevitably affect his mother's situation.
Joseph Khorol's five friends were released from investigation at the end of January 1954 due to lack of evidence for their crimes. But the former "underground leader," trying to behave like a seasoned lawyer during the repeated investigation, brought trouble upon himself again.
During an interrogation on March 13, 1954, MVD investigators and the deputy prosecutor of the Odessa region unexpectedly asked Khorol if he had ever corresponded with Nineli Nemirinskaya. After receiving a negative answer, the investigators presented the stunned Joseph with his own letters discussing escape from the camp. Nemirinskaya herself had brought these to the Odessa MVD department in the summer of 1953, fearing consequences. It should be noted that although she provided the letters to the MVD on her own initiative, she gave further testimony reluctantly, trying to ignore court summons.
In April 1954, the old charges against Khorol were dropped. But now he was tried not only for anti-Soviet activities but also for attempted escape – under Articles 54-10 part 1 and 16-78 part 2 of the Ukrainian SSR Criminal Code. At the trial, Joseph defended himself, having written the appropriate statement. Despite his father's pleas to reconsider and accept a paid lawyer, nothing helped.
On April 29, 1954, Joseph was sentenced to imprisonment for the second time. This time the sentence was 10 years in labor camps followed by 5 years of disenfranchisement. The convicted man refused to file an appeal against the verdict of the Odessa Regional Court. After transfer to Vladimir Prison for especially dangerous criminals, Khorol ended up in Peschlag in Karaganda. In the camp, he learned that his mother, who had heroically fought for her son, died in Inta on February 18, 1954, two months before his second trial.
In Peschlag, Joseph Khorol continued to uncompromisingly follow the ideals of Zionism and tried to minimize cooperation with Soviet authorities. Communicating not only with Jews but also with Kazakhs, Ukrainians, and Balts imprisoned in the camp, Joseph was not afraid to declare: only as independent states could their countries develop normally. And if necessary – Israel would help! These conversations took place in 1955, in a Soviet camp for political prisoners! When in autumn 1955, the USSR organized forced subscription to state loans, which also affected prisoners, Khorol told the prison administration that he would not give a single kopeck.
The young Zionist had to remain imprisoned until the amnesty of 1956. In the summer of 1956, Joseph Khorol returned to Odessa. The path to becoming a lawyer was closed to a political prisoner, so he chose his other passion and enrolled in the history department of the same Odessa State University.
Not abandoning his mission, Khorol continued to promote Zionism among Odessa Jews. His wife, Itta Berlyanshchik, who was born in Harbin, helped him in this. In 1947, Itta arrived in the Soviet Union with her father, musician Monya Berlyanshchik. They came only to visit relatives, but the trap snapped shut already on board the Soviet ship. Father and daughter were forced to remain in the Union. Joseph and Itta fell in love at first sight and became husband and wife a month after meeting. They also connected through their political views.
When the couple began to be followed by surveillance, they had to leave Odessa. In 1960, Joseph and Itta Khorol moved to Riga, where a large and active group of Zionists operated. Joseph immediately joined their ranks and began creating groups to study Jewish history, distributing Hebrew textbooks and Zionist literature published abroad.
Many contemporaries of those events believed that Joseph Khorol was the founder of the first mass-produced samizdat in the Soviet Union. In 1963, despite the danger of re-arrest, he managed to secretly print Bialik's poems, Jabotinsky's articles, and a Russian translation of the popular Jewish book "Exodus" by Leon Uris in a state printing house in Riga. Joseph Khorol brought three hundred copies of each of these publications to the Soviet capital, and Meir Gelfond's group distributed them in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and even in the Urals.
In 1969, Joseph and Itta Khorol, after many years of waiting, received permission and immigrated to Israel. In the land of his ancestors, Joseph Khorol immediately felt at home. Knowing much more about the history of Eretz Israel than the average "sabra," having served time for all Soviet Jews, Khorol leaned toward the right wing of Israeli politics. He became one of the founders of the "Shlom-Zion" party, and later a member of the "Tehiya" party.
However, memories of how the Bolsheviks suppressed any opinion different from the official one made him repeatedly stand on the side of justice. He opposed the ban on the Communist Party of Israel. A good person and a true Zionist according to Khorol is a law-abiding citizen, left or right, who is necessarily dissatisfied with the government. Without criticism, there will be no development and democracy!
In Israel, Joseph and Itta Khorol helped new immigrants find work, created a fund to assist newcomers, and organized a system for sending packages and letters to their comrades in Soviet camps. In 1977, they moved to the settlement of Elkana, becoming some of the first Russian-speaking settlers in Samaria.
Joseph Khorol never petitioned for his rehabilitation, but in 1990 his case was reviewed without his knowledge. The Judicial Board for Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR found no corpus delicti in his actions. In the autumn of the same year, as soon as the borders opened, Joseph Mikhailovich came to the USSR and immediately went to the Komi Republic. At the fork in the road leading to the Inta station, he erected a monument to his mother Zinaida Khorol, who died in the Minlag of Inta. The monument was placed a kilometer from the prisoner cemetery established at the Sangorodok of Minlag, which has not survived to this day. In addition to information about his mother taken by the GULAG, Khorol placed an inscription on the front part of the monument: "To the unknown and countless women - victims of Stalinist terror. Your names are immortal."
The Prisoner of Zion died in Israel from a severe heart disease on January 1, 2010. He never knelt before the oppressors of his people, never doubted for a second the correctness of his chosen path. And just as David once saw the defeated Goliath, Joseph Khorol was fortunate enough to witness the death of the colossus called the USSR.
19.09.2021
Joseph Khorol
1929 – 2010
