Joseph A. Rosen: Difference between revisions

Joseph A. Rosen (born: Joseph Borisovich Rosen, 1877, Moscow — 1949, New York), an American agronomist of Russian origin, was head of the Russian branch of the Joint^[1] and head of Agro-Joint from 1924 to 1938.

Biography[edit]

Born in Moscow.^[2] His father was the owner of a dye-house in Tula.^[3] Studied at Moscow University.^[2] Sentenced to exile in Siberia for participating in a revolutionary group. He was a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party within the Menshevik fraction.^[4] At the age of 17, he fled from exile to Germany. Studied at the agricultural department of the Heidelberg University.

In 1903 he emigrated to the US and worked in agriculture for two years. In 1905-1908 he continued his education at the Michigan Agricultural College, where he received the degree of Master of Agriculture. He received his Ph.D. in agrochemistry from the University of Minnesota. In mid-1910, he developed a new variety of winter rye, named after him (“Rosen Rye”) and widespread in American farms.^[4] According to Rosen’s project and under his leadership, an agronomic center was created in Minneapolis with a branch in Yekaterinoslav, and later in Kharkov. The purpose of this center was to train agronomists from the Russian Empire in the skills and techniques of highly productive agriculture. In 1915-1918 he was head of the agricultural department in the New York office of the Petrograd International Commercial Bank. He was also head of the agricultural colony of the Jewish Colonisation Association, created by Baron Maurice de Hirsch, in Woodbine (New Jersey).

Beginning in 1921, he was the envoy of Joint in Russia and the representative of Joint in the American Relief Administration;^[5] from 1924 to 1938 he was director of the Agro-Joint Corporation, which aimed to transform Soviet Jews, mainly “Lishenets“s, into peasants … Rosen believed that the secret of a happy future for the Jewish people under Soviet rule was in “productivity”, that is, in the transition to productive labor.^[5]

Rosen directed a program to relocate Jewish German doctors from Nazi Germany to the USSR. Subsequently, at least 14 of them were repressed by the NKVD, and their families were partially expelled.^[6]

During the years of the Great Terror, both of Rosen’s deputies for Agro-Joint were arrested — on November 27, 1937^[7] Ezekiel Abramovich Groer (1886—1938), and on March 27, 1938 — Samuil Efimovich Lyubarsky (1878—1938).^[8] Their relatives were told that both of them were sentenced to “10 years without the right to correspond”.^[9] Rosen decided to take charge. On December 16, 1937, he sent a letter from Paris to the NKVD:

“Through the wives of German Jewish doctors who were expelled from the USSR, who at one time had the opportunity to go to the Soviet Union to work in their specialty with the assistance of our organization, I learned that the NKVD had arrested several of our employees. As the director of Agro-Joint, I consider it my duty to declare that if any illegal actions are found in the work of our organization in the USSR, then I am personally responsible for them, and not our employees and not my deputies. I hereby ask you to give me the opportunity to testify to the relevant Soviet authorities on all issues related to the activities of our organization in the USSR, and I agree in advance not to resort to the protection of any diplomatic sources, since the matter concerns me personally^[10]“

According to the recollections of the daughter of Ezekiel A. Groer, Rosen even managed to meet with Vyacheslav Molotov, but Molotov said that he could not do anything, since Rosen’s former Agro-Joint employees had already confessed to everything.^[9] In fact, both Groer and Lyubarsky had already been shot^[9] (the former on March 15, 1938,^[7] the…