The Strange Life of Ilya Ehrenburg

by Mark Weber

Ilya Ehrenburg, the leading Soviet propagandist of the Second World War, was a contradictory figure.

A recent article in the weekly Canadian Jewish News sheds new light on the life of this "man of a thousand masks." [1]

Ehrenburg was born in 1891 in Kiev to a non-religious Jewish family. In 1908 he fled Tsarist Russia because of his revolutionary activities.

Although he returned to visit after the Bolshevik revolution, he continued to live abroad, including many years in Paris, and did not settle in the Soviet Union until 1941.

A prolific writer, Ehrenburg was the author of almost 30 books. The central figure of one novel, The Stormy Life of Lazik Roitschwantz, is a pathetic "luftmensch," a recurring character in Jewish literature who seems to live "from the air" without visible means of support .

As a Jew and a dedicated Communist, Ehrenburg was a relentless enemy of German National Socialism. During the Second World War, he was a leading member of the Soviet-sponsored Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. More