Background
Jacob Krciser was the son of a Cantonist (Jewish soldier in the military service, who was coerced to convert to Christianity).
Jacob Krciser was the son of a Cantonist (Jewish soldier in the military service, who was coerced to convert to Christianity).
He began his own military career at an early age and quickly rose in the ranks of the Soviet army, becoming a general at thirty-one.
Kreiser later served in various other important positions in the course of the war. In 1941 he was appointed commander of the Third Army, which fought on the Kalinin and Yelets fronts. He was moved to the Second Army and then to the Fifty-First, which fought the Germans in the western Ukraine and liberated Crimea. The fact that Crimea had been liberated by a Jewish officer refocused attention on an earlier Soviet plan to establish a Jewish autonomous republic in that territory to replace the failed Birobidzhan oblast.
Although Jews constituted only 6 percent of the total population, they were primarily involved in agriculture, and, furthermore, the local Muslim Tatars had collaborated with the Nazis, creating an impetus for their own relocation. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, of which Kreiser was a prominent member, endorsed the idea, although nothing came of it. Kreiser served in a series of campaigns in which the Baltic states were liberated. Toward the end of the war he was promoted to colonel-general; he ended the war whit the rank of general of the army.
Kreiser’s status as a war hero earned him fame and status in the Soviet Union. Stalin once denied charges of anti-Semitism by stating that his best friend was the Jew, Jacob Kreiser. Upon the fabrication of the spurious doctors’ plot to kill Stalin, however, the Russian dictator turned against Kreiser. Kreiser was one of only a handful of Jews who refused to sign a proposed open letter in Pravda disclaiming the existence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and claiming that the doctors’ plot was the result of an American and Zionist conspiracy. Kreiser was stripped of his command, but this was restored following Stalin’s death shortly after.
Kreiser was appointed deputy to the Supreme Soviet in 1962. He maintained his command in the army, serving as commander of the sensitive Far East region, centered in Vladivostok, until his death.
Quotations:
From Kreiser’s Address to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee; August 1942
My nation, which has given the world illustrious sages and brilliant thinkers, is also one that fights for its freedom.