J.D.C., Other American Jewish Groups Ridicule Moscow’s Charges

The American Joint Distribution Committee which is charged by Moscow with participating in an allegedly American "plot" to kill top Soviet leaders, today issued a statement terming the charges "fantastic" and denying categorically that there is any truth in them. The statement, signed by Edward M. M. Warburg, J.D.C. chairman, reads:

"The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has been engaged in the relief and rehabilitation of Jewish victims of war and persecution since 1914. During these 38 years, it has operated, at one time or another, according to need, in some 60 countries of the world. It has never engaged in political activities or deviated from its principle of exclusive adherence to its humanitarian role.

"The charges as reported in the newspapers, whether during the course of the Prague trials, or in these latest reports from Moscow, that the Joint Distribution Committee has engaged in espionage or has participated in plots against the Russian Government or any government, are fantastic. We categorically deny that there is any truth whatsoever in any of these charges."

The American Jewish Committee said in a statement that the Soviet announcement that nine "terrorist Jewish doctors" plotted to kill top Soviet leaders is "the latest demonstration of how the Kremlin is using the fantastic big lie of anti-Semitism as a weapon of state policy. It would seem that no charges are too preposterous to further the nefarious aims of the Soviets for world domination," the statement continued. "Even physicians and non-political relief organizations, such as the Joint Distribution Committee, are grist for the Red lie mills.

"This latest Kremlin aggression proves that anti-Semitism as expressed in the Soviet campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’; in the Hungarian deportations; in the Czech purge trial; and the recent purges of Jews in Eastern Germany, are not sporadic manifestations of local character, but are part of an overall Soviet pattern dictated by basic Kremlin policy. This policy apparently aims at destroying all religious, racial and ethnic minorities," the statement said.

Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the American Jewish Congress, declared: "From Prague to East Germany to Moscow completes the circle of infamy which the Soviets have drawn around themselves and their satellites by their undisguised use of anti-Semitism as a fixed instrument of their political policies and purposes. The world did not need these latest monstrous charges from Moscow to indicate the extent of Soviet determination to stamp out all human freedoms by inciting anti-Semitism throughout Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union has unleashed new forces of fear and of evil which will take great human toll."

The World Jewish Congress issued a statement signed by Dr. Maurice L. Perlzweig, director of its international affairs department, declaring: "The news which comes from Moscow will intensify the deep disquiet throughout the Jewish world created by the Prague trials. In some ways, this news is even more disturbing." He warned the Soviet leaders to remember that "they have embarked on a course the end of which they cannot foresee, and that they have challenged forces which lie beyond the control of any government."

The Anti-Defamation League said in a statement that the Moscow charges come "straight from the Russian book of horrors of Czarist days." Henry Edward Schultz, national chairman of the A.D.L., declared that "the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other anti-Semitic forgeries widely distributed throughout Russia in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, are providing the inspiration for Soviet anti-Semitism today." He added that "Stalin seems intent on genocide against the Jews."