and sang a song in Yiddish at a Moscow concert in a coded protest against the ongoing persecution of Soviet Jewry.34 But Robeson refused Pfeffer’s request to speak out publicly upon his return to the United States. Instead, Robeson rejected the rumors of mass arrests as anti-Soviet propaganda, and refused to denounce Stalin’s methods although he had met the victims personally. To a reporter from Soviet Russia Today, Robeson denied also the reports of a purge against the Jews in Soviet Russia, stating that he had “met Jewish people all over the place . . . I heard no word about it.”
