officials—disconcerting results. Assuming that they were within the boundaries of the official policy, or possibly no longer caring whether they were or not, thousands of Soviet Jews, most of them Jews “by blood” from Moscow and Leningrad, took the occasion to express their feelings of pride, solidarity, and belonging. As one Moscow student wrote to the JAFC, Please help me join the Israeli Army as a volunteer. At a time when the Jewish people are shedding their blood in an unequal struggle for their freedom and independence, my duty as a Jew and a Komsomol member is to be in the ranks of their fighters. I am twenty-two years old; I am in good physical shape and have sufficient military training. Please help me fulfill my duty. 128 Before the war, being a Komsomol member of Jewish descent had meant being an internationalist and, for Hodl and her children, an avid follower of Russian high culture. After the war—and apparently still in the spirit of Leninst- Stalinist nationalities policy—it meant being a proud ethnic Jew too. As another Muscovite wrote two days earlier, “there is no doubt that the government of the USSR will not hinder this effort [of sending arms and volunteers to Palestine], just as it did not hinder the campaign of aid to Republican Spain.” Jewish national redemption equaled anti-Fascism equaled Soviet patriotism. “A tremendous change has taken place in our lives: our name—‘Jew’—has been raised so high that we have become a nation equal to other nations. At present, a small handful of Jews in the State of Israel is conducting an intense struggle against Arab aggression. This is also a struggle against the English empire. It is a struggle not only for an independent State of Israel, but also for our future, for democracy and justice.” 129 Comrade Stalin and the Soviet government, according to another letter to the JAFC, “had always helped independence fighters” (unlike “the English and American scum,” who are “inciting, and will always incite, the Arabs”). Ultimately, however, the Jewish cause in Palestine was the cause of all Jews because all Jews were related by blood and because of what they had all been through. “Now [wrote another JAFC correspondent], when a war to the death is being waged, when the war is getting more and more intense, when our brothers and sisters are shedding their blood, when the fascist Arab gangs supported by Anglo-American imperialism are trying to strangle the heroic Jewish people and drown them in blood, we, Soviet Jews, cannot sit and wait in silence. We must actively help those self-sacrificial heroes triumph, and active help means