A warning that Soviet Russia will no longer consider anti-Semitism a purely internal affair of the country where it is practiced, is published in the information bulletin of the Soviet embassy here, in an article by Vladimir Komarov, president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
Citing the text of a reply given by Joseph Stalin in 1931 to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency with regard to his views on anti-Semitism, Prof. Komarov points out that Stalin, in his statement, declared: “Anti-Semitism, as an extremes from of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous survival of cannibalism. In the USSR anti-Semitism is prosecuted most severely as a phenomenon profoundly inimical to the Soviet system. According to the laws of the USSR, active anti-Semites are punished by death.”
Prof. Komarov then goes on to point to the German mass-extermination of Jews in the Maidanek and other camps and emphasizes that the basis for these mass-executions was actually laid down through “stupid anti-Semitic jokes” in the beer halls of Munich.”
“This,” Prof. Domarov says, “is why our attitude towards racial hatred today is different from our attitude in the days of our youth. In those days we merely felt like turning our backs on an infamous and vile spectacle. Today we shall not turn our backs on it until we have stamped it out, pulled it up by the roots, and taken all measures against its recurrence.”
Taking issue with those who are inclined “to forget and forgive” the Germans for their annihilation of Jews and other innocent civilians, the head of the Academy of Sciences, warns that any leniency that will be shown to the Germans for Maidanek will only “pave the way for new fascist pogroms.”
“When any country gives shelter to the Hitlerites or their ideas in the form of discriminatory legislation, in the from of racist organizations or a racist press, it is no longer an internal affair of that country,” Komarov writes. “If your neighbor uncovers in his backyard a container of poison gases that threaten to spread over the entire town, you do not waste time by asking permission to enter his backyard and thus avert the death of thousands of people. Racist ideas are more dangerous than any poison gas. It is our generation’s great duty to the future, to the cause of progress, civilization and humanity, not only to put out the smoking bonfire of fascism but to uncover and extinguish every one of its smoldering coals,” the article concludes.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
