Isaac Babel

"We knew each other for barely twelve years. He was always one of my staunchest defenders, even when the literary establishment was hounding me for not publishing anything in the 1930s. Ehrenburg said that some writers write like rabbits. Others, like me, resembled elephants. After my arrest in 1939, Stalin's secret police tortured me and made me implicate Ehrenburg as a spy. I was afraid he would be arrested too. Still, his secretary in Moscow was the only person to give money to my wife in Moscow when she was left alone with our daughter. Rubenstein is right to emphasize how Ehrenburg insured my 'rehabilitation" in the 1950s and championed the publication of my work. Without his intervention, who knows how long it would have taken the Kremlin to allow my name in print again."