PROGRAM FOR SURVIVAL: THE COMMUNIST POSITION ON THE JEWISH QUESTION

New York: New Century, 1947. Paper Wrappers. 8vo. 63 pages. "Report to a special Party conference in 1946 on the Jewish question. Bittelman was an American Communist leader and journalist who grew up in Odessa, Russia. He joined the Bund at an early age and emigrated to the United States in 1912, where he settled in New York City. In 1919 he became editor of Der Kampf, the organ of the Jewish Communist Federation. He also joined the American Communist Party that year and became its so-called "Jewish specialist. " In 1922 he was sent to Moscow to obtain funds to establish Morning Freiheit, the party's Yiddish paper. In 1951 he was indicted under the Smith Act for conspiring to overthrow the government and was jailed from 1955 until 1957. Until his expulsion from the Party in 1958 because of revisionism he wrote for the Daily Worker (Greenstein, EJ) . Bittelman denounces the main obstacles to antifascist unity of the Jewish democratic forces: the reactionary Jewish nationalists, assimilationists, and Social Democrats. Resolutions call for efforts to achieve united action and labor unity, present the position of the Party on Palestine and on Jewish immigration, and urge a progressive Jewish culture in America. " SUBJECT(S) : Communism and Judaism; Jews-Politics and Government. Very good condition. (AMRN-6-41).