The draft is handwritten on a sheet of lined paper 8 ¼" x 12 ¾". The final, typewritten letter is on a piece of letter-size paper. The letter is addressed simply: Generalissimo Stalin, the Kremlin, Moscow, USSR. In the letter, the 66-year-old Tel-Aviv resident Rivka Rotshtein who had lost her husband and son in Poland, murdered by the Nazis, appeals to Stalin's magnanimity asking him to permit her 60-year-old sister, together with the sister's 16-year-old daughter who lived in Kharkiv, to leave the Soviet Union to travel to Palestine. Rivka wrote that she had submitted all the necessary

The draft is handwritten on a sheet of lined paper 8 ¼" x 12 ¾". The final, typewritten letter is on a piece of letter-size paper. The letter is addressed simply: Generalissimo Stalin, the Kremlin, Moscow, USSR. In the letter, the 66-year-old Tel-Aviv resident Rivka Rotshtein who had lost her husband and son in Poland, murdered by the Nazis, appeals to Stalin's magnanimity asking him to permit her 60-year-old sister, together with the sister's 16-year-old daughter who lived in Kharkiv, to leave the Soviet Union to travel to Palestine. Rivka wrote that she had submitted all the necessary paperwork to the Soviet consulate in Beirut and it should have been forwarded to Moscow. She wrote that her limited means should be sufficient to support her sister, and their only dream was to spend their last years on Earth together. The typewritten letter is hand-signed by Rivka Rotshtein in Hebrew.

In very good to excellent condition. Both the draft and the typewritten letter show mild wrinkles and an occasional faint stain, not too obvious and not obscuring the text.

There are many theories and opinions on why Stalin supported the formation of Israel in 1948 but one can be reasonably sure that it was not this emotional plea of an elderly lonely Jewish woman that moved him to do so.
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