In 1920-1923, one Jacob Rachlis / (יעקב ראכליס / Яков Меерович Рахлис – Yankev Rakhlis or Iakov Meerovich Rakhlis) stood at the helm of the strongest Jewish military organization in some eighteen hundred years – since the Bar Kokhba revolt –, to be eclipsed by the Haganah only about a decade later.[1] Organized in response to the pogroms claiming tens of thousands of Jewish lives, the Jewish self-defense network in Ukraine under the command of Rakhlis numbered nearly 13,000 members across 46 localities in mid-1922.[2]
Ever since I started working on my doctoral dissertation and discovered Rakhlis, I have been on and off obsessing over finding his descendants.[3] This for both selfish and altruistic motives: on the one hand, I was hoping to get my hands on any letters, photographs, diaries, and the like his progenies might have in their possession, and on the other wanted to make them aware of the little-known story of their once-famed ancestor.
Although Jewish paramilitaries were intermittently legalized, armed, relied upon – and misused – by the fledgling Soviet authorities, Rakhlis’ name appears on only a precious few documents of the many, many thousands I have used in my work. In others, he is only mentioned by his position – Chief Plenipotentiary of Jewish Self-Defense in Ukraine.
Rakhlis in the Documents
The main body of the documents mentioning Rakhlis are petitions by Jewish communities and self-defense units, and supporting affidavits by Soviet civilian and military authorities. These constituted the basis of an appeal by the self-defense network to the Standing Convention for Combating Banditism (Postoiannoe soveshchanie po bor’be s banditizmom, or PSBB), the authority in charge of suppressing the seething Ukrainian countryside by means of regular and paramilitary units.
Legalized in late February of 1921 by the PSBB, Jewish self-defense units were ordered to be disbanded by the Kiev Governorate Military Convention in mid-May. Anxious to avoid becoming defenseless while the threat of pogroms was still very real, the self-defense network decided to intercede with the PSBB. On June 4, 1921 Rakhlis delivered dozens of petitions and affidavits to the PSBB in Khar’kov, then the capital of Soviet Ukraine. According to a report of the Informational Department of the Soviet of Peoples’ Commissars, more than 2700 people signed the petitions overall.[4] Sixteen of the documents contain a note to the effect that they were delivered personally by Rakhlis.[5]
The Samooborona journal. Photo courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Rakhlis also figures prominently and by name in the Jewish self-defense network’s journal, Samooborona (‘Self-Defense’), issued in July 1922.[6] As Samooborona reported, Rakhlis toured a number of localities with Jewish self-defense units, ironing out disagreements within and overseeing elections to the self-defense units’ leadership. In April 1922, Rakhlis and Fel’dberg, the editor of Samooborona presided over the celebration of the second anniversary of the self-defense network’s establishment in Rakhlis’ hometown of Tarashcha.[7] Based on textual similarities with his memoir, it is highly likely that at least one of the programmatic articles of Samooborona was written by Rakhlis himself.[8]
In September 1922, Zionist organizations were declared illegal, and the Soviet secret police in Ukraine promptly began a harsh crackdown on Jewish groups suspected of Zionist leanings.[9] Yet again, it was the Kiev Governorate Military Convention that led the charge against Jewish self-defense groups, resolving on October 4 to disband them in larger towns and drawing up a list of units to be preserved.[10] In December, Kiev Military Commissar Laiosh Gavro (Gavró Lajos) duly presented such a list to the Convention. His proposal suggested leaving in place 28 units with 790 members – a far cry from the more than nine thousand members the listed units had just months earlier.[11]
This time, the self-defense organization attempted to mobilize international opinion as a way of fighting back and preserving itself. Between late 1922 and early 1923, Rakhlis sent four memoranda to the World Jewish Aid Conference, signing the pleas as the plenipotentiary of the self-defense in Ukraine. Rakhlis described in detail the history and present condition of the self-defense organization, and – most importantly – its continued significance in securing Jewish life in Ukraine.[12] In mid-1923, two additional memoranda were sent, this time on behalf of all the plenipotentiaries of the self-defense organization.[13]
Rakhlis in the US
The US press reported on Jewish self-defense in Ukraine in two distinct waves, in late 1922 and late 1923, with a number of 1923 articles naming Rakhlis as the head of the self-defense network.[14] Then, in 1926, Rakhlis’ suddenly popped up on the pages of the US press again – and in the US.
In March 1926, the New York-based Yiddish paper Der morgn-zshurnal published a public appeal by Rakhlis to former self-defense members and anyone with documents about – or willingness to help work on – the history of Jewish self-defense. Rakhlis asked to be contacted at a New York address.[15] Later that year, Rakhlis appeared as the organizer of a meeting in New York. Convened by the Jewish National Workers Alliance, the meeting on June 17, 1926 aimed to raise funds for the Schwartzbard Defense Fund, a legal fund for the benefit of Scholem Schwartzbard, who had just a month earlier assassinated Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura, widely considered to be chief pogromshchik.[16]
Notably, apart from Rakhlis, speakers at the 1926 meeting included the head of the famed Odessa Jewish Combat Druzhina – and later Jabotinsky’s right-hand man – Shlomo Iankelevich-Iakobi,[17] as well as Moyshe Kats, Jewish self-defense activist in 1905, and political and cultural luminary after 1917 in Ukraine – and by that time opponent of Jewish self-defense and Jewish military units.[18]
Right around the time of the meeting in New York, series of Rakhlis’ articles on Jewish self-defense were printed in two East European Zionist papers, the Białystok-based Dos naye lebn and the Kovno-based Di yidishe shtime.[19] Then, in July 1926, Rakhlis published an article on the history of Jewish self-defense in Ukraine in Der morgn-zshurnal,[20] and in the same year self-published a book on the same topic in New York. The back cover advertised a book on pogroms and self-defense, to be published by the Berlin-based Eastern Jewish Historical Society. Again, Rakhlis provided a New York address for those interested in pre-ordering the book from him.[21]
I was not able to trace Rakhlis’ life trajectory beyond 1926. My working theory was that he either remained in the United States, or perhaps emigrated to Israel – but certainly did not return to the USSR. However, I was unable to track him down despite my best efforts.
The Tarashcha self-defense unit at a funeral of a pogrom victim
Z. Ostrovskii, Evreiskie pogromy: 1918-1921 (Moscow: Shkola i kniga, 1926), 127 [Jewish Pogroms 1918-1921].
Finding Rakhlis
I knew from the 1921 appeals against the disarming of self-defense units that Rakhlis’ patronymic was Meerovich – that is, his father’s name was Meer. In a compendium on Ukrainian book history, there appears one Ia. M. Rakhlis, the translator of Lesage’s Adventures of Gil Blas, published in Tarashcha in 1915, printed by the press of M. N. Rakhlis.[22] Similarly, a work on pamphlets advertising 1917-1918 social events, Ia. M. Rakhlis is listed as a speaker at an August 1917 meeting in Tarashcha, whose flyer was printed in Tarashcha, at the printing press of M. N. Rakhlis.[23]
Using the The Statue of Liberty―Ellis Island Foundation’s passenger search, I found out that Rakhlis arrived to New York in early November 1925, aboard the S.S. Berengaria. Prior to his departure from Cherbourg he was staying in Berlin, at none other than the major pogrom historian, Elias Tcherikower. On the ship manifest, Rakhlis declared that he was a 29-year-old journalist born in Tarashcha, and was going to join his uncle, Samuel Bellar, in Roxbury, Massachusetts.[24]
I now knew that Rakhlis was born in Tarashcha, and that I had located a person in Tarashcha with the same initials and surname. Further confirmation on Rakhlis’ background harbored a somewhat surprising discovery: I was able to definitively identify Rakhlis through his brother, Peisakh Meerovich Rakhlis, born in Tarashcha to an owner of a typography – that is, to Meer Rakhlis. From August 1921 until 1923, Peisakh Rakhlis worked as a special agent of the Kiev Governorate Branch of the Cheka. In this capacity, he partook in the persecution of Zionists in Ukraine – all the while his brother was heading a mighty Jewish paramilitary network increasingly subject to persecution on the part of the Cheka and its successor agencies, due the network’s purported Zionist, petty bourgeois, and Jewish nationalist leanings.[25]
Based on the name of his uncle, I think I was finally able to track down Rakhlis’ descendants, but my attempts to contact them have thus far been in vain. My hope is that this minor historical snippet might find its way to – or be eventually found by – a relative of Rakhlis. If you are one, know one, find one – please get in touch!
UPDATE: The good people of a Ukrainian genealogy Facebook group with full Ancestry.com access figured out that Rakhlis changed his name to Jacob Liss and was naturalized in 1939. On his 1936 naturalization form he declared that he had no spouse or children. He can also be found on the 1950 US census, living as a lodger in Chicago, without immediate family members. Following in his father's footsteps, Rakhlis worked in the printing industry, and owned a printing plant named Roosevelt Press, which he sold in 1941. He appears to have passed away in 1961.
Notes
[1] The manpower of the Haganah rose from a few thousand in the late 1920s to 17,000 in 1937: Martin van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force (New York: Public Affairs, 1998), 24; Bauer, Yehuda. “From Cooperation to Resistance: The Haganah 1938-1946.” Middle Eastern Studies 2, no. 3 (1966): 183.
[2] YIVO Institute Archives, New York, RG80/28/2470-2471; Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, P-10a/VII/2 (hereafter: CAHJP); Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation, hereafter: GARF), fond R-1318, opis’ 1, delo 795, listy 15-15ob (hereafter: R-1318/1/795/15-15ob); published as: L. B. Miliakova and I. A. Ziuzina, eds., Kniga pogromov: pogromy na Ukraine, v Belorussii i evropeiskoi chasti Rossii v periode Grazhdanskoi voiny, 1918-1922 gg.: sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2007), 538 [The Book of Pogroms: Pogroms in the Ukraine, Belarus and the European Part of Russia in the Civil War Period, 1918-1922: A Collection of Documents].
[3] Mihály Kálmán, “Hero Shtetls: Jewish Armed Self-Defense from the Pale to Palestine, 1917–1970,” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2017).
[4] Tsentra’lnyi derzhavnyi arkhiv hromadskykh ob’’ednan’ Ukrainy (Central State Archives of Public Organizations of Ukraine, hereafter: TsDAHOU): 1/20/615/91. Petitions were presented by Boguslav (1000-1300 signatures), Kanev (150), Rakitno (340), Shenderovka (170), Ol’shana (84), Shpola (279), Steblev (161), and Tarashcha (295): Tsentra’lnyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh organiv vlady Ukrainy (Central State Archives of Supreme Organs of Authority of Ukraine, hereafter: TsDAVOU) 3204/1/76/2-16ob, 67-68ob; TsDAVOU 3204/1/76/17-19 = 3204/1/75/46.
[5] TsDAVOU 3204/1/76/20 = 3204/1/75/13 = TsDAVOU 5/1/662/2; TsDAVOU 3204/1/76/23, 29-29ob, 30-30ob, 32, 33-33ob, 34, 46, 47, 48-48ob, 49-49ob, 50, 51, 52, 64, 66; see duplicates on: TsDAVOU 5/1/662/2; TsDAVOU 2497/3/180/8-8ob, 9; TsDAVOU 3204/1/75/27; Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI – Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, hereafter: RGASPI) 272/1/94/8, 9.
[6] The only extant copies I was able to locate are on YIVO RG80/27/2179-2191ob = 2192-2235 = 2237-2259. The authors of the articles were all anonymous. Rakhlis’ second memorandum (below) mentioned that the monthly expenses of publishing a journal amounted to 100 million rubles. According to a memoir of a Zionist-Socialist self-defense activist, his fellow party member in charge of the party’s cultural and propaganda activities, Khaim Fel’dberg, also edited a journal titled Golos samooborony (‘The Voice of Self-Defense’). It is likely that the journal in question was in fact the Samooborona: CAHJP P-10a/VII/2/ Memorandum no. 2, p. 3; Lavon Institute Archive (hereafter: LIA) VII/22/47/10, published as: Ben-Tziyon Yitzhar, “ha-Haganah be-Tarashtz'a,” in Sefer Tz''S: le-Qorot ha-miflagah ha-tziyonit-sotzi'alistit u-vrit no`ar Tz. S. bi-Vrit ha-Mo`atzot, ed. Yehudah 'Erez (Tel Aviv: `Am `oved, 1963), 329 [The Self-Defense in Tarashcha].
[7] "Khronika: Tarashchanskii raion: Tarashcha," Samooborona 1 (July 1922): 10 [Chronicle: Tarashcha Raion: Tarashcha]; "Khronika: Kievskii raion: Rzhishchev," Samooborona 1 (July 1922): 14 [Chronicle: Kiev Raion: Rzhishchev]; "Khronika: Kievskii raion: Pereiaslav," Samooborona 1 (July 1922): 14-15 [Chronicle: Kiev Raion: Pereiaslav]; "Khronika: Kremenchugskii raion: Cherkassy," Samooborona 1 (July 1922): 15-16 [Chronicle: Kremenchug Raion: Cherkassy]; “Khronika: Kremenchugskii raion: Raionnoe soveshchanie,” Samooborona 1 (July 1922): 16-17 [Chronicle: Kremenchug Raion: Raion congress]; "Khronika: Zvenigorodskii raion: Zvenigorodka," Samooborona 1 (July 1922): 12 [Chronicle: Zvenigorodka Raion: Zvenigorodka].
[8] "Revoliutsiia dukha," Samooborona 1 (July 1922): 1-2 [The Revolution of the Soul], cf. Yankev Rakhlis, Di yidishe zelbstshuts in Ukraine: In di shoyderlekhe teg fun Petlyure'n un farsheydene pogrom-bandes (New York: s.n., 1926), 35 [The Jewish Self-Defense in Ukraine: In the Dreadful Days of Petliura and Various Pogrom-Bands].
[9] Olga Bertelsen, “GPU Repressions of Zionists: Ukraine in the 1920s,” Europe-Asia Studies 65, no. 6 (2013): 1088-1089.
[10] Haluzevyi derzhavnyi arkhiv Ministerstvo oborony Ukrainy (Departmental State Archive of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, hereafter: HDA MOU) 3773/19823/43/26ob.
[11] HDA MOU 3773/19823/37/8 = GARF R-1318/1/795/15-15ob = 18-18ob = 19-19ob = Derzhavnyi arkhiv Cherkas’koi oblasti (State Archive of Cherkasy Oblast’, hereafter: DAChO Cherkasy) R-184/1/33/50; republished as: Miliakova and Ziuzina, eds., Kniga pogromov, 537. See also: Dov-B'er Slutzki, “ha-Haganah ha-`atzmit be-'Uqra'inah,” he-`Avar 17 (1970): 98-99 [Self-Defense in Ukraine].
[12] CAHJP P-10a/VII/2.
[13] YIVO RG80/27/2308-2310, 2312-2314.
[14] N. Herman, “Di yidishe zelbstshuts in Ukraine,” Der morgen-zshurnal (April 30, 1923): 7 [The Jewish Self-Defense in Ukraine]; Ben Mose Zwi, “The Jewish Self-Defense in Soviet Russia,” The Sentinel (October 5, 1923): 16-17; ibid., “The Jewish Self-Defense in Soviet Russia,” The Reform Advocate (October 6, 1923): 7-8. See also: ibid., “The Jewish Self-Defense in Soviet Russia,”, The Australian Jewish Herald (November 9, 1923): 16-17.
[15] “Komitet tsu farefntlikhn di historishe zelbstshuts-materialn,” Der morgen-zshurnal (March 16, 1923): 4 [Committee to Publish the Historical Documents of the Self-Defense].
[16]“Petliura un di pogromen,” Der morgen-zshurnal (June 8, 1926): 4 [Petliura and the Pogroms] ;“Shvartsbard farteydikungs-fond vert groyse folks-bavegung,” Der morgen-zshurnal (June 9, 1926): 4 [The Schwartzbard Defense Fund Becomes a Large Popular Movement]; “Morgn abend di groyse folks farzamlung in Kuper Yunion vegn di ukrainer pogromen,” Der morgen-zshurnal (June 16, 1926): 4 [Tomorrow Evening Large Peoples’ Meeting in the Cooper Union about the Ukrainian Pogroms]; “Workers Mass Meeting Adopts Resolution on Schwartzbard’s Act” Jewish Daily Bulletin 3, no. 503 (June 21, 1926): 2; “Workers Mass Meeting Adopts Resolution on Schwartzbard’s Act” Sentinel 62, no. 13 (June 25, 1926): 29; “To Defend Schwartzbard,” New York Times 75, no. 24982 (June 18, 1926): 25. On the Schwartzbard Defense Committee and the concerns about arousing antisemitism by publicly applauding the assassination, see: David Engel, The Assassination of Symon Petliura and the Trial of Scholem Schwartzbard, 1926-1927 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 72-89.
[17] On Iakobi, see: David Cebon and Benjamin Rodney, The Forgotten Zionist: The Life of Solomon (Sioma) Yankelevitch Jacobi (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2012); Elena Karakina, “Sionist Solomon Iakoby – Organizator otriadov evreiskoi samooborony v Odesse (1917-1920),” in V-ia mezhdunarodnaia nauchnaia konferentsiia: Odessa i evreiskaia tsivilizatsiia: K 185-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia L'va Pinskera: 23-25 oktiabria 2006 goda: Sbornik materialov konferentsii, ed. Mikhail Rashkovetskii (Odessa: Studiia Negotsiant, 2007), 127-132 [The Zionist Solomon Iakoby, Organizer of Jewish Self-Defense Units in Odessa (1917-1920)].
[18] On Kats as a self-defense organizer, see: Peysekh Novik, “Di lebns-geshikhte fun Moyshe Kats,” in Moyshe Kats bukh, ed. Peysekh Novik (New York: Moyshe Kats bukh-komitet, 1963), 22 [The Biography of Moyshe Kats]. See also Kats’ memoirs: Moyshe Kats, A dor, vos hot farloyrn di moyre: Bleter zikhroynes fun arum 1905 (New York: Moyshe Kats yubiley-komitet, 1956) [A Generation That Lost its Fear: Memories from around 1905]; Moyshe Kats, The Generation That Lost Its Fear: A Memoir of Jewish Self-Defense and Revolutionary Activism in Tsarist Russia, trans. Lyber Katz (New York: Blue Thread Communications, 2012). On his opposition to Jewish military units, see: Moyshe Kats, “Yidishe militer-fragn 1,” Naye tsayt 54 (November 16 [29], 1917): 2 [Jewish Military Questions 1]; ibid., “Yidishe militer-fragn 2,” Naye tsayt 55 (November, 17[30], 1917): 2 [Jewish Military Questions 2]. See also: Elias Tcherikower, Istoriia pogromnogo dvizheniia na Ukraine, 1917-1921 gg. Vol. 1 (Antisemitizm i pogromy na Ukraine, 1917-1918 gg.: K istorii ukrainsko-evreiskikh otnoshenii), (Berlin: Ostjüdisches Historisches Archiv, 1923), 90-92, 100-101 [The History of the Pogrom Movement in Ukraine: Anti-Semitism and Pogroms in Ukraine, 1917-1918: To the History of Ukrainan-Jewish Relations].
[19] Yankev Rakhlis, “Di yidishe zelbst-shuts armey,” Di yidishe shtime (June 16, 1926): 4 [The Jewish Self-Defense Army]; further articles in the series appeared on June 17, 18, 20, 23, and 25 – all on page 4, except for the one on June 20, printed on page 5. ibid., “Ukrainer yidn hobn geleygt zeyere lebns tsu rateven zeyere shvesters un brider fun shendlikhn toyt,” Dos naye lebn (June 18, 1926): 3 [Ukrainian Jews Laid Down Their Lives to Save Their Brothers and Sisters from Disgraceful Death]; further articles in the series appeared on June 20, 21, 22, and 23 – all on page 2.
[20] Yankev Rakhlis, “Der kamf fun der zelbstshuts mit di ukrainer banditn,” Der morgen-zshurnal (July 20, 1926): 7 [The Fight of the Self-Defense against Ukrainian Bandits].
[21] Rakhlis, Di yidishe zelbstshuts.
[22] V. Iu. Ome’lchuk, ed., Knyha v Ukraini, 1861-1917: Materialy do repertuaru ukrains’koi knyhy, vol. 9 (L) (Kyiv: Natsional’na Akademiia Nauk Ukrainy, 2006), 125 [The Book in Ukraine, 1861-1917: Materials on the Repertoire of Ukrainian Books].
[23] V. V. Bush, ed., Mitingi, sobraniia, lektsii v 1917-1918 gg. (Materialy dlia bibliografii letuchikh izdanii) (Petrograd: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1920), 62 [Meetings, Gatherings, Lectures in 1917-1918 (Materials for the Bibliography of Pamphlets)].
[24] https://heritage.statueofliberty.org/show-manifest-big-image/czoxOToiMDA0ODU3NTgwXzAwNTg4LmpwZyI7/2; https://heritage.statueofliberty.org/show-manifest-big-image/czoxOToiMDA0ODU3NTgwXzAwNTg3LmpwZyI7/2 (accessed March 15, 2023). On Tcherikower, see, e.g.: Joshua M. Karlip, “Between Martyrology and Historiography: Elias Tcherikower and the Making of a Pogrom Historian, East European Jewish Affairs, 38, no. 3 (2008), 257-280.
[25] Iurii Shapoval, Volodymyr Prystaiko, and Vadym Zolotar'ov, ChK-GPU-NKVD v. Ukraini: Osoby, Fakty, Dokumenty (Kyiv: Abris, 1997), 537-538 [Cheka-GPU-NKVD in Ukraine: People, Facts, Documents]; “800 Zionists under Soviet Surveillance,” The Sentinel (December 1, 1922): 43.
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