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86-714: Beilis's story was fictionalized in Bernard Malamud 's 1966 novel The Fixer , which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction . Menahem Mendel Beilis was born into a Hasidic family. In 1911, he was an ex-soldier and the father of five children. He was employed as a superintendent at the Zaitsev brick factory in Kiev . On March 12, 1911, a 13-year-old boy named Andriy Yushchinskyi disappeared on his way to school. Eight days later, his mutilated body

172-428: A PhD , he was not allowed to teach literature courses, and for a number of years, his rank was that of instructor; nevertheless, he was promoted to assistant professor in 1954 and became a tenured associate professor in 1958. While at OSU, Malamud devoted three days out of every week to his writing, and gradually emerged as a major American author. In 1961, he left OSU to teach creative writing at Bennington College ,

258-668: A socialist state and ruled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany . It was closely aligned with communist Russia and the Soviet Union . It had secret police, commonly referred to as the Stasi , which made use of an extensive network of civilian informers. From the 1970's, the main form of political, cultural and religious repression practiced by the Stasi, was a form of 'silent repression' called Zersetzung ("Decomposition"). This involved

344-601: A dozen policemen failed to establish order in the streets.” Around six months before his death, Beilis was interviewed by the English-language Jewish Daily Bulletin . Asked for “one outstanding impression” of the trial in Kiev, he paid a final tribute to the Russian Gentiles who had helped him to escape the blood libel, such as the detective Mykola Krasowski  [ uk ] (Nikolai Krasovsky) and

430-546: A government loan, he completed the coursework for a master's degree in English at Columbia University in 1937-38; although he felt it was "close to a waste of time", he eventually received the degree after submitting a thesis on Thomas Hardy in 1942. From 1939-40, he was a temporary substitute teacher at Lafayette High School in the Bath Beach section of Brooklyn. He was excused from World War II -era military service because he

516-462: A government's political, ideological, or social opponents and dissidents . Secret police organizations are characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. They protect the political power of a dictator or regime and often operate outside the law to repress dissidents and weaken political opposition, frequently using violence. They may enjoy legal sanction to hold and charge suspects without ever identifying their organization. Egypt

602-545: A hard and lonely life and died in his fifties. Bertha Malamud was "emotionally unstable" and attempted suicide by swallowing disinfectant in 1927; although her elder son discovered her in time, she died in a mental hospital two years later. Malamud entered adolescence at the start of the Great Depression , graduating from central Flatbush's storied Erasmus Hall High School in 1932. During his youth, he saw many films and enjoyed relating their plots to his school friends. He

688-671: A network of informants known as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (or CDR) to monitor government opponents. Secret state police have operated in secret among CDR groups, and most adult Cubans are officially members. CDR are tasked with informing on other Cubans and monitoring activity in their neighborhoods. During the Truman Doctrine , Mexican president Miguel Alemán Valdés created DFS to combat communist opposition. The agency

774-420: A network of provincial and local State Security Bureaus, integrated with local Public Security Bureaus which make up part of the policing system of China. State security agents are People's Police officers with the dual function of law enforcement and repressing political dissent. State security bureaus and public security bureaus are functionally co-located within the same buildings as each other. The MSS and

860-400: A part of the murdered boy's body with the importance of the number thirteen in "Jewish ritual," only to have it revealed later that there were actually 14 wounds on that part of the body. The chief prosecutor A.I. Vipper made supposedly antisemitic statements in his closing address. There are conflicting accounts of the twelve Christian jurors : seven were members of the notorious Union of

946-656: A piece in his honor, A tfile fun Mendel Beilis , which he recorded in 1921. Due to his great fame, Beilis could have become wealthy through commercial appearances. Spurning all such offers, he and his family left Russia for a farm purchased by Baron Rothschild in Palestine , then a province of the Ottoman Empire . Beilis had difficulty making ends meet but he resisted leaving. When friends and well-wishers pleaded with him to go to America, he would respond: “Before, in Russia, when

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1032-584: A position he held until retirement. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967. In 1942, Malamud met Ann De Chiara (November 1, 1917 – March 20, 2007), an Italian American Roman Catholic , and a 1939 Cornell University graduate. Despite the opposition of their parents (prompting their relocation from Brooklyn to Greenwich Village ), they married on November 6, 1945. Ann typed his manuscripts and reviewed his writing. They had two children, Paul (b. 1947) and Janna (b. 1952). Janna

1118-472: A secret police agency which acted extra-judicially and was involved in such activities as kidnapping a presidential candidate and the assassination of Park Chung-hee , among other things. In Taiwan, the National Security Bureau , established in 1954, is the regime's main intelligence agency. The Taiwan Garrison Command acted as a secret police/national security body which existed as a branch of

1204-525: A strong alibi due to the fact that he worked on the Jewish Sabbath. Yushchinskyi was abducted on a Saturday morning, when Beilis was at work, as confirmed by his Gentile co-workers. Receipt slips for a shipment of bricks signed by Beilis that morning were produced as evidence. The prosecution argued that Beilis could have gone out for a few minutes, kidnapped Yushchinskyi, and then returned to work. Internal police documents from 1912 subsequently revealed that

1290-485: A writer named Ben-Zion Katz, suggested countering Father Pranaitis with questions like "When did Baba Bathra live and what was her activity" which he described as the equivalent of asking an American "Who lived at the Gettysburg Address ?", a ploy that invites a purported expert witness unfamiliar with the subject matter to wrongly assume a word is used in one sense where it is in fact used in another, demonstrating

1376-460: A year when a delegation led by a military officer came to his cell. In what might have been a ploy to get Beilis to incriminate himself or other Jews, the officer informed Beilis that he would soon be freed due to a manifesto pardoning all katorzhniks (convicts at hard labor) on the tercentenary jubilee of the reign of the Romanov dynasty . As related in his memoir, Beilis refused this overture: This

1462-497: Is an account of the life of Morris Bober, a Jewish immigrant who owns a grocery store in Brooklyn. Although he is struggling financially, Bober takes in a drifter of dubious character. This novel was quickly followed by The Magic Barrel , his first published collection of short stories (1958). It won Malamud the first of two National Book Awards that he received in his lifetime. In 1967, his novel The Fixer , about antisemitism in

1548-619: Is home to Africa's and the Middle East's first internal security service: The State Security Investigations Service . Initially it was formed during the British occupation of Egypt as the Intelligence wing of the regular police . After the 1952 coup , the State Security apparatus was reformed and reorganized to suit the security concerns of the new socialist regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser. The SSIS

1634-478: Is one of many incidents from Beilis's memoir that Bernard Malamud incorporated in his novel The Fixer . During the pre-trial period, 1911–1912, the case was investigated by Nikolay Krasovsky (Николай Александрович Красовский), a chief investigator in the Kiev Police Department . Krasovsky continued his work despite efforts to sabotage the investigation and refused to participate in a campaign to falsify

1720-677: Is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex life scandles [sic] and plain blackmail when they should be catching criminals. They also have a habit of sneering at local law enforcement officers. Yet in spite of these sentiments, Truman took no action to try to abolish the FBI, or even more modest reforms. Beginning a decade later in 1956, Hoover's FBI began the COINTELPRO project, aimed at suppressing domestic political opponents. Among other targets, this included Martin Luther King Jr. During

1806-637: Is the author of a memoir about her father, titled My Father Is A Book . Malamud was Jewish, an agnostic , and a humanist . He died in Manhattan (where he had maintained a winter residence at the Upper West Side 's Lincoln Towers since 1972) on March 18, 1986, at the age of 71. He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts . In his writing, Malamud depicts an honest picture of

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1892-653: The Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) was the secret police of President Robert Mugabe who is responsible for detaining, torturing, mass beating, raping and starving thousands of civilians on the orders of Mugabe. In East Asia , the Embroidered Uniform Guard ( Chinese : 錦衣衞 ; pinyin : Jǐnyīwèi ) of the Ming dynasty was founded in the 1360s by the Hongwu Emperor and served as

1978-691: The Communist Party of Cuba , the Ministry of the Interior has served a number of secret policing functions. As recently as 1999, the Human Rights Watch reported that repression of dissidents was routine, albeit harsher after heightened periods of opposition activity. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor under the US State Department reported that Cuba's Ministry of the Interior utilizes

2064-557: The Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police, Gestapo ) and Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Field Police, GFP) were a secret police organization used to identify and eliminate opposition, including suspected organized resistance. Its claimed main duty, according to a 1936 law, was "to investigate and suppress all anti-State tendencies". One method used to spy on citizens was to intercept letters or telephone calls. They encouraged ordinary Germans to inform on each other. As part of

2150-759: The Getúlio Vargas dictatorship , between 1930 and 1946, the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS) was the government's secret police. During the military dictatorship in Brazil , DOPS was employed by the military regime along with the Department of Information Operations - Center for Internal Defense Operations (or DOI-CODI) and the National Intelligence Service (or SNI), and engaged in kidnappings, torture, and attacks against theaters and bookstores. The National Intelligence Directorate , or DINA,

2236-674: The Imperial Japanese Navy known as the Tokkeitai . However, their civilian counterpart known as the Tokkō was formed in 1911. Its task consisted of controlling political groups and ideologies in Imperial Japan , resembling closer the other secret police agencies of the time period. For this it earned the nickname "the Thought Police". The Korean Central Intelligence Agency or KCIA was

2322-954: The Italian Social Republic (RSI), OVRA were a fascist Italian secret police organization. Ivan the Terrible implemented Oprichnina in Russia between 1565 and 1572. In the Russian Empire , the secret police forces were the Third Section of the Imperial Chancery and then the Okhrana . Agents of the Okhrana were vital in identifying and suppressing opponents of the Tsar. The Okhrana engaged in torture and infiltration of opponents. They infiltrated labor unions, political parties, and newspapers. After

2408-769: The Middle East , located in Baghdad. Shurta was one of the most both powerful intelligence and secret police organizations of the Abbasid era which was led by the Abbasids in the 8th and 9th centuries during the Golden Age of Islam . In Japan, the Kenpeitai existed from 1881 to 1945 and were described as secret police by the Australian War Memorial . It had an equivalent branch in

2494-680: The Ministry of Public Security control the overall national police network of China and the two agencies share resources and closely coordinate with each other. In British Hong Kong , the Special Branch was established in 1934 originally as an anti-communist squad under MI5 with assistance from MI6 . The branch later joined the Crime Department of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force in 1946 and focused on preventing pro-KMT rightists and pro-CCP leftists from infiltrating

2580-683: The National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize . Bernard Malamud was born on April 26, 1914, in Brooklyn, New York , the son of Bertha (née Fidelman) and Max Malamud, Russian Jewish immigrants who owned and operated a succession of grocery stores in the Williamsburg , Borough Park and Flatbush sections of the borough, culminating in the 1924 opening of a German-style delicatessen (specializing in "cheap canned goods, bread, vegetables, some cheese and cooked meats") at 1111 McDonald Avenue on

2666-814: The PEN/Malamud Award recognizes excellence in the art of the short story. The award is funded in part by Malamud's $ 10,000 bequest to the PEN American Center . The fund continues to grow thanks to the generosity of many members of PEN and other friends, and with the proceeds from annual readings. Past winners of the award include John Updike (1988), Saul Bellow (1989), Eudora Welty (1992), Joyce Carol Oates (1996), Alice Munro (1997), Sherman Alexie (2001), Ursula K. Le Guin (2002), and Tobias Wolff (2006). Secret police Secret police (or political police ) are police , intelligence , or security agencies that engage in covert operations against

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2752-674: The Reich Security Main Office , it was also a key organizer of the Holocaust . Although the Gestapo had a relatively small number of personnel (32,000 in 1944), "it maximized these small resources through informants and a large number of denunciations from the local population". After the defeat of the Nazis in World War II , Germany was split into West and East Germany . East Germany became

2838-570: The Russian Empire , became one of the few books to receive the National Book Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction . His other novels include Dubin's Lives , a powerful evocation of middle age (largely inspired by Malamud's own extramarital affairs) that employs biography to recreate the narrative richness of its protagonists' lives, and The Tenants , perhaps a meta-narrative on Malamud's own writing and creative struggles, which, set in New York City , deals with racial issues and

2924-611: The Russian Revolution , the Soviet Union established the Cheka , OGPU , NKVD , NKGB , and MVD . Cheka, as an authorized secret police force under the rule of the Bolsheviks, suppressed political opponents during the Red Terror . It also enacted counterintelligence operations such as Operation Trust , in which it set up a fake anti-Bolshevik organization to identify opponents. It was

3010-513: The Torah , the Talmud and many other books to conclusively debunk the testimony of the "experts" brought forth by the prosecution. The lamplighter on whose testimony the indictment of Beilis rested confessed that he had been confused by the secret police . The prosecution's case was further undermined after it had spent a great deal of effort to link the 13 wounds which Professor Sikorsky had discovered on

3096-454: The centenary of Malamud's birth (April 26, 1914). To commemorate the centenary, Malamud's current publisher (who still keeps most of Malamud's work in print) published on-line (through their blog) some of the "Introductions" to these works. Oregon State University announced that they would be celebrating the 100th birthday "of one of its most-recognized faculty members" (Malamud taught there from 1949 to 1961). Media outlets also joined in

3182-419: The rule of law . People apprehended by the secret police are often arbitrarily arrested and detained without due process. While in detention, arrestees may be tortured or subjected to inhumane treatment. Suspects may not receive a public trial , and instead may be convicted in a kangaroo court -style show trial , or by a secret tribunal. Secret police known to have used these approaches in history included

3268-764: The Republic of China Armed Forces. The agency was established at the end of World War II and operated throughout the Cold War. It was disbanded on 1 August 1992. It was responsible for suppressing activities viewed as promoting democracy and Taiwan independence. Secret police organizations originated in 18th-century Europe after the French Revolution and the Congress of Vienna . Such operations were established in an effort to detect any possible conspiracies or revolutionary subversion. The peak of secret-police operations in most of Europe

3354-737: The Russian People , part of the movement known as the Black Hundreds . There was no representative of the intelligentsia in the jury. However, after deliberating for several hours, the jury acquitted Beilis. The Beilis trial was followed worldwide and the antisemitic policies of the Russian Empire were severely criticized. The Arabic newspaper Filastin published in Jaffa, Palestine , dealt with this trial in several articles. Its editor, Yousef El-Issa , published an editorial titled: "The Disgrace of

3440-436: The Twentieth Century". He wrote on 13 October 1913: We said in the previous issue and repeat that their accusing the Jews of shedding blood to perform religious ritual is a fabrication with regard to those who believe it; an abomination with regard to those who spread it; and a disgrace to the twentieth century, during which, if minds are not liberated from the shackles of ignorance, God will never liberate them. The Beilis case

3526-654: The Venezuelan government. From 1951 until 1953, it operated a prison camp on Guasina Island  [ es ] , which was effectively a forced labour camp . The Seguridad Nacional was abolished following the overthrow of Pérez Jiménez on 23 January 1958. During the crisis in Venezuela and Venezuelan protests , Vice Presidents Tareck El Aissami and Delcy Rodríguez have been accused of using SEBIN to oppress political demonstrations. SEBIN director and general Manuel Cristopher Figuera reported that SEBIN would torture political demonstrators during interrogation sessions. Ilan Berman and J. Michael Waller describe

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3612-427: The book was later translated into English (1926, 1992, and 2011 editions), and also Russian. Beilis died unexpectedly at a hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York on July 7, 1934 and was buried two days later at the Mount Carmel Cemetery , Glendale, Queens , which is the burial place of Leo Frank and Sholem Aleichem . Though Beilis's fame had faded since the trial in 1913, it returned briefly at his death. His funeral

3698-419: The celebration. Throughout March, April, and May 2014 there were many Malamud stories and articles on blogs, in newspapers (both print and on-line), and on the radio. Many of these outlets featured reviews of Malamud's novels and stories, editions of which have recently been issued by the Library of America . There were also many tributes and appreciations from fellow writers and surviving family members. Some of

3784-440: The colony. The National Security Department in the current HKSAR is a secret police agency created after the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law . The NSD has accused and arrested dissenting voices in Hong Kong for "endangering" the national security, including pro-democracy politicians, protestors, and journalists. Some websites were also reportedly banned by the department, including Hong Kong Watch . In

3870-407: The day. Toward the end of this period, he also worked at the similarly oriented Chelsea Vocational High School (where he taught in the day program to supplement his income) and Harlem Evening High School. Starting in 1949, Malamud taught four sections of freshman composition each semester at Oregon State University , an experience fictionalized in his 1961 novel A New Life . Because he lacked

3956-411: The defense demonstrated his ignorance of basic Talmudic concepts and definitions, such as hullin , to the point where "many in the audience occasionally laughed out loud when he clearly became confused and couldn't even intelligibly answer some of the questions asked by my lawyer." A Tsarist secret police agent is quoted, reporting on Pranaitis' testimony, as saying: A Beilis Defense Committee advisor,

4042-435: The defense in praise of Jewish values and exposed the falsehood of the accusations, while Aleksandr Glagolev , philosopher and professor of the Kiev Theological Academy of the Orthodox Christian , affirmed that "the Law of Moses forbids spilling human blood and using any blood in general in food ." The well-known and respected Rabbi of Moscow , Rabbi Yaakov Mazeh , delivered a long, detailed speech quoting passages from

4128-469: The despair and difficulties of the immigrants to America, and their hope of reaching their dreams despite their poverty. Malamud wrote slowly and carefully; he is the author of eight novels and four collections of short stories. The posthumously published Complete Stories contains 55 short stories and is 629 pages long. Maxim Lieber served as his literary agent in 1942 and 1945. He completed his first novel, The Light Sleeper , in 1948, but later burned

4214-492: The dissolution of the State Security and declared the new National Security Agency would replace it and be responsible for its internal security and counter-terrorist duties. In Uganda , the State Research Bureau (SRB) was a secret police organisation for President Idi Amin . The Bureau tortured many Ugandans, operating on behalf of a regime responsible for more than five hundred thousand violent deaths. The SRB attempted to infiltrate every area of Ugandan life. In Zimbabwe,

4300-478: The dynasty's secret police until the collapse of Ming rule in 1644. Originally, their main functions were to serve as the emperor's bodyguard and to spy on his subjects and report any plots of rebellion or regicide directly to the emperor. Over time, the organization took on law enforcement and judicial functions and grew to be immensely powerful, with the power to overrule ordinary judicial rulings and to investigate, interrogate, and punish anyone, including members of

4386-496: The emergence of black/ African American literature in the American 1970s landscape. Malamud was renowned for his short stories, often oblique allegories set in a dreamlike urban ghetto of immigrant Jews . Of Malamud, Flannery O'Connor wrote: "I have discovered a short-story writer who is better than any of them, including myself." He published his first stories in 1943, "Benefit Performance" in Threshold and "The Place Is Different Now" in American Preface . Shortly after joining

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4472-411: The end, he was acquitted of any wrongdoing. The Beilis trial took place in Kiev from September 25 through October 28, 1913. The prosecution was composed of the government's best lawyers. Professor Sikorsky of Kiev State University (father of Igor Sikorsky ), a medical psychologist , testified as an expert witness for the prosecution that in his opinion it was a case of ritual murder . Beilis had

4558-419: The evidence. He was fired from the case but continued to investigate privately, assisted by former colleagues from the Police Department. They eventually found the real killers of Yushchinskyi: A gang of criminals - Rudzinsky, Singayevsky, Latyshev - and Vera Cheberyak, whose son Zhenya was a friend of Yushchinskyi's. On 30–31 May 1912, a report was published in Kiev's newspapers leading to Krasovsky's arrest. In

4644-569: The faculty of Oregon State University, his stories began appearing in Harper's Bazaar , The New Yorker , Partisan Review , and Commentary . Writing in the second half of the twentieth century, Malamud was well aware of the social problems of his day: rootlessness, infidelity, abuse, divorce, and more. But he also depicted love as redemptive and sacrifice as uplifting. In his writings, success often depends on cooperation between antagonists. For example, in " The Mourners " landlord and tenant learn from each other's anguish. In "The Magic Barrel",

4730-405: The fall of a totalitarian regime. Arbitrary detention , abduction and forced disappearance , torture , and assassination are all tools wielded by secret police "to prevent, investigate, or punish (real or imagined) opposition." Because secret police typically act with great discretionary powers "to decide what is a crime" and are a tool used to target political opponents, they operate outside

4816-413: The headquarters for the Arrow Cross Party , which killed hundreds of Jews in its basement, among other targets considered "enemies of the race-based state". The same building was used by the State Protection Authority (or ÁVH) secret police. The Soviet-aligned ÁVH moved into the former fascist police headquarters and used it to torture and execute state opponents. In the Fascist Italy (1922-1943) and

4902-596: The ignorance of the witness for the audience. In the Gettysburg example, an informed person will immediately recognise the term 'Gettysburg Address' refers to a speech (address) and not to a location (address). There were enough Jews in the court for the resultant laughter to negate Pranaitis' value to the prosecution. Beilis was represented by the most able attorneys of the Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev bars: Vasily Maklakov , Oscar Gruzenberg , N. Karabchevsky, A. Zarudny , and D. Grigorovitch-Barsky. Two prominent Russian professors, Troitsky and Kokovtzov, spoke on behalf of

4988-436: The imperial family. In 1420, a second secret police organization run by eunuchs, known as the Eastern Depot ( 東廠 ; Dōng Chǎng ), was formed to suppress suspected political opposition to the usurpation of the throne by the Yongle Emperor . Combined, these two organizations made the Ming dynasty one of the world's first police states . The Ministry of State Security ( 国家安全部 ; Guójiā Ānquán Bù ) in modern China controls

5074-453: The journalist Brazul-Brushkovsky: “There was real heroism, real sacrifice. They knew that by defending me their careers would be ruined, even their very lives would not be safe. But they persisted because they knew I was innocent.” While Bernard Malamud's novel The Fixer is based on the life of Mendel Beilis, Malamud transformed Beilis’ character, and that of his wife, in ways that Beilis's descendants found degrading. The real Mendel Beilis

5160-443: The manuscript. His first published novel was The Natural (1952), which has become one of his best remembered and most symbolic works. The story traces the life of Roy Hobbs, an unknown middle-aged baseball player who achieves legendary status with his stellar talent. This novel was made into a 1984 movie starring Robert Redford. Malamud's second novel, The Assistant (1957), set in New York and drawing on Malamud's own childhood,

5246-494: The matchmaker worries about his "fallen" daughter, while the daughter and the rabbinic student are drawn together by their need for love and salvation. Philip Roth : "A man of stern morality", Malamud was driven by "the need to consider long and seriously every last demand of an overtaxed, overtaxing conscience torturously exacerbated by the pathos of human need unabated". Saul Bellow , also quoting Anthony Burgess : "Well, we were here, first-generation Americans, our language

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5332-556: The memories of Beilis and his wife through the characters of Yakov Bok and Bok's wife Raisl. Malamud wrote back, attempting to reassure David Beilis that The Fixer “makes no attempt to portray Mendel Beilis or his wife. Yakov and Raisl Bok, I am sure you will agree, in no way resemble your parents.” The historian Albert Lindemann lamented: “By the late twentieth century, memory of the Beilis case came to be inextricably fused (and confused) with... The Fixer .” Bernard Malamud Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986)

5418-399: The more prominent of these kinds of tributes included those from Malamud's daughter, from Malamud's biographer Philip Davis, and from fellow novelist and short story writer Cynthia Ozick . Other prominent writers who gathered for readings and tributes included Tobias Wolff , Edward P. Jones , and Lorrie Moore . PEN/Malamud Award Given annually since 1988 to honor Malamud's memory,

5504-519: The secret police as central to totalitarian regimes and "an indispensable device for the consolidation of power, neutralization of the opposition, and construction of a single-party state ". In addition to these activities, secret police may also be responsible for tasks not related to suppressing internal dissent, such as gathering foreign intelligence, engaging in counterintelligence, organizing border security, and guarding government buildings and officials. Secret police forces sometimes endure even after

5590-609: The secret police of East Germany (the Ministry for State Security or Stasi ) and Portuguese PIDE . A single secret service may pose a potential threat to the central political authority. Political scientist Sheena Chestnut Greitens writes that: When it comes to their security forces, autocrats face a fundamental 'coercing dilemma' between empowerment and control. ... Autocrats must empower their security forces with enough coercing capacity to enforce internal order and conduct external defense. Equally important to their survival, however, they must control that capacity, to ensure it

5676-498: The situation of a Jew in urban American society.' 'A remarkably consistent writer,' he goes on, 'who has never produced a mediocre novel .... He is devoid of either conventional piety or sentimentality ... always profoundly convincing.' Let me add on my own behalf that the accent of hard-won and individual emotional truth is always heard in Malamud's words. He is a rich original of the first rank." [Saul Bellow's eulogy to Malamud, 1986] There were numerous tributes and celebrations marking

5762-451: The sustained use of covert psychological harassment methods against people, which were designed to cause mental and emotional health problems, and thereby debilitate them and cause them to become socially isolated. Directed-energy weapons are considered by some survivors and analysts to have also been used as a constituent part of Zersetzung methods, although this is not definitely proven. The House of Terror museum in Budapest displays

5848-414: The temporary forerunner to the KGB , a later secret police agency used for similar purposes. The NKVD participated in the Great Purge under Stalin. In Cuba, President Fulgencio Batista 's secret police, known as the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities (or BRAC), suppressed political opponents such as the 26th of July Movement through methods including violent interrogations. Under

5934-420: The weakness of the case was known. One prosecution witness, presented as an expert in Judaic rituals, was a Lithuanian Catholic priest, Justinas Pranaitis from Tashkent , well known for his antisemitic 1892 work Talmud Unmasked . Pranaitis testified that the murder of Yushchinskyi was a religious ritual. One police department official is quoted as saying: Pranaitis' credibility rapidly dissipated when

6020-460: The western fringe of Flatbush. (Then known as Gravesend Avenue, the thoroughfare received its current moniker in 1934, while the surrounding community—abutting the elevated BMT Culver Line and characterized as a "very poor" subsection of the neighborhood in a contemporaneous demographic survey of Brooklyn College students —is now considered to be part of the Kensington section.) A brother, Eugene, born in 1917, suffered from mental illness, lived

6106-485: The word ‘Palestine’ conjured up a waste and barren land, even then I chose to come here in preference to other countries. How much more, then, would I insist on staying here, after I have come to love the land!” When Beilis's financial situation became desperate, he finally gave in. In 1921 he settled in the United States where in 1925 he self-published an account of his experiences titled The Story of My Sufferings . Originally published in Yiddish (1925 and 1931 editions),

6192-563: Was 1815 to 1860, "when restrictions on voting, assembly, association, unions and the press were so severe in most European countries that opposition groups were forced into conspiratorial activities." The Geheime Staatspolizei of Austria and the Geheimpolizei of Prussia were particularly notorious during this period. After 1860, the use of secret police declined due to increasing liberalization, except in autocratic regimes such as Tsarist Russia . In Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945,

6278-413: Was English and a language is a spiritual mansion from which no one can evict us. Malamud in his novels and stories discovered a sort of communicative genius in the impoverished, harsh jargon of immigrant New York. He was a myth maker, a fabulist, a writer of exquisite parables. The English novelist Anthony Burgess said of him that he 'never forgets that he is an American Jew, and he is at his best when posing

6364-488: Was a powerful secret police agency under the rule of Augusto Pinochet , which was charged with killings and torture related to repression of political opponents. Chilean government investigations found that over 30,000 people were tortured by the agency. During the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez , the Seguridad Nacional secret police investigated, arrested, tortured , and assassinated political opponents to

6450-705: Was a systematic practice by that repressive apparatus. During the War on Terror , The SSIS used to receive suspected terrorists that were sent to Egypt from the United States and used to interrogate them using torture. After the 2011 revolution , demonstrators demanded that the service be dissolved and several buildings (including the headquarters in Nasr City) were stormed by protesters that gathered evidence of torture tools, secret cells and documents showing surveillance on citizens. On March 15 2011, Egypt's Minister of Interior announced

6536-425: Was an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow , Joseph Heller , Isaac Bashevis Singer , Norman Mailer and Philip Roth , he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural , was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford . His 1966 novel The Fixer (also filmed ), about antisemitism in the Russian Empire , won both

6622-479: Was attended by over 4,000 people. The New York Times noted that Beilis's fellow Jews “always believed that his conduct [in resisting all pressure to implicate himself or other Jews] saved his countrymen from a pogrom.” A history of the Eldridge Street Synagogue , where Beilis's funeral was held, describes the scene at his funeral as follows: “The crowd could not be contained in the sanctuary. As many as

6708-800: Was compared with the Leo Frank case , in which an American Jew, manager of a pencil factory in Atlanta, Georgia , was convicted of raping and murdering 13-year-old Mary Phagan. Leo Frank was lynched after his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. After his acquittal, Beilis became a celebrity. One indication of the extent of his fame is the following quote: "Anyone wanting to see the major stars of New York's Yiddish stage on Thanksgiving weekend in 1913 had three choices: Mendel Beilis at Jacob Adler's Dewey Theater, Mendel Beilis at Boris Thomashefsky's National Theater, or Mendel Beilis at David Kessler's Second Avenue Theater.” The violinist Jacob Gegna also composed

6794-790: Was discovered in a cave near the Zaitsev brick factory. Beilis was arrested on July 21, 1911, after a lamplighter testified that the boy had been kidnapped by a Jew. A report submitted to Tsar Nicholas II by the judiciary named Beilis as the murderer. Beilis spent over two years in prison awaiting trial. Meanwhile, an antisemitic campaign was launched in the Russian press against the Jewish community, with accusations of ritual murder. Among those who wrote or spoke against these false accusations were Maxim Gorky , Vladimir Korolenko , Alexander Blok , Alexander Kuprin , Vladimir Vernadsky , Mykhailo Hrushevskyi and Pavel Milyukov . Beilis had been in prison for over

6880-512: Was especially fond of Charlie Chaplin 's comedies. He received his BA degree from the City College of New York in 1936. Thereafter, Malamud worked for a year at $ 4.50 a day (equivalent to $ 99 in 2023) as a student teacher; however, he twice failed an examination that would enable him to become a permanent substitute teacher in the New York City public school system. Momentarily funded by

6966-550: Was later replaced by DISEN in 1985 after DFS agents were working for the Guadalajara Cartel . In 1989, it was replaced by CISEN . In Mississippi , the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (or "Sov-Com") was a state agency given unusual authority by the governor of Mississippi from 1956 to 1977, to investigate and police private citizens in order to uphold racial segregation . This authority

7052-501: Was made a separate branch of the Ministry of Interior and separated from the regular police command. During the Nasser era, It was intensively trained by the Soviet KGB on coercive interrogation techniques, mass surveillance, public intimidation and political suppression. The SSIS was responsible for suppressing opposition groups to Nasser and his successors (Sadat and Mubarak). Torture

7138-626: Was not officially dissolved until 1977. The Sov-Com served as a model for the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission and the Alabama State Sovereignty Commission . In private writings in 1945, President Harry S. Truman wrote that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (under Director J. Edgar Hoover ) was tending towards becoming a secret police force: We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. F.B.I.

7224-576: Was the sole support of his father, who had remarried to Liza Merov in 1932. While working in a temporary capacity for the Bureau of the Census in Washington D.C. , he contributed sketches to The Washington Post , marking some of his first published works. Returning to New York after the job ended, he taught English at Erasmus Hall (in its adult-oriented evening session) for nine years while focusing on writing during

7310-549: Was used to suppress and spy on the activities of civil rights workers , along with others suspected of sentiments contrary to white supremacy. Agents from the Sov-Com wiretapped and bugged citizens of Mississippi, and historians identify the agency as a secret police force. Among other things, the Sov-Com collaborated with the Ku Klux Klan and engaged in jury tampering to harass targets. The agency ceased to function in 1973, but

7396-405: Was “a dignified, respectful, well-liked, fairly religious family man with a faithful wife, Esther, and five children.” Malamud's protagonist Yakov Bok is “an angry, foul-mouthed, cuckolded, friendless, childless blasphemer.” When The Fixer was first published, Beilis’ son David Beilis wrote to Malamud, complaining both that Malamud had plagiarized from Beilis’ memoirs and that Malamud had debased

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