A spokesman for the State Department said today that the “reported Soviet arrests of a number of Jewish doctors under accusation of medical sabotage seems to be another step in the recent Soviet campaign against Jews revealed in the anti-Zionist aspects of the Prague trial.”
“The real motivation for the present charges is not yet known,” the spokesman said. “But the Soviets have used this technique of the accusation of medical sabotage before. For an example it was claimed that during the 1937 purge trials Maxim Gorky, the writer, had been the victim of medical sabotage by opponents of Stalin. It is becoming increasingly clear that current Soviet allegations of Zionist plots are indicative of an extraordinary and growing sense of internal insecurity.”
Sen. Herbert H. Lehman said today that “Stalin has now taken up where Hitler left off” in the persecution of Jews. He said “the charges made in Moscow against a group of Jewish doctors, and the tone and background of that announcement, give the final confirmation to the terrible fact that the Kremlin has indeed determined to pick up anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as its latest weapon to divide and conquer the free world.”
C.L.O. executive vice-president Allan S. Haywood said today that the arrest of nine doctors in Russia and the evidence of anti-Semitism involved “shows the hand of the beast – an anti-Semitic beast trained by Hitler and adopted by Stalin.” He described the arrests as “Red fascism in action.”
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.
