Confidential circulars requesting incriminating data on leading members of the Jewish communities in the Soviet Union were sent out by the Kremlin to internal security authorities throughout the country as early as January 1952; refugees from Soviet Russia revealed in testimony upon reaching West German territory, the Christian Science Monitor reports today from Munich.
The report, sent by Edmund Stevens, who received the Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for uncensored articles on Russia, says that within a month after the confidential instructions were issued, in the Moscow region alone dossiers had been collected on about 400 Jews in administrative and managerial positions. All these persons gradually were eliminated under varying charges of bribery, embezzlement, and nepotism. Parenthetically, under the Soviet system it is possible to build up cases of this kind against almost anyone in a position of responsibility.
The central security authorities in Moscow used reports accumulated throughout the country in response to the circulars to document a general “Jewish plot,” the report says. This then served as pretext for a natinnwide purge of Jews in administrative and managerial jobs.
PROMINENT JEWISH COMMUNISTS ARRESTED; MANY LAWYERS PURGED
In Moscow, the report continues, practically everyone, Jew or Gentile, known to have had some contact with the Israeli Legation, and especially with Mrs. Golda Meyerson, former Israeli Minister, either was arrested or hauled in for questioning. Those interrogated included persons who on Soviet and Communist Party orders had discussed with Israeli representatives plans for forming a Society for Soviet-Israeli Friendship and establishing a branch of VOKS (Society for Cultural Relations) in Israel. In the big Ukrainian city of Kharkov a number of prominent Jewish members of the Communist Party were accused of being in touch with the Israeli representatives in Moscow.
Following this initial spadework by the security authorities, the anti-Jewish campaign began to snowball in typical Soviet purge fashion. The first victims were forced to divulge the names and addresses of their relations and close friends. Many of these were arrested later and, in turn, charged with implication in the over-all “Jewish plot” in addition to the usual petty crimes.
Among the first hit were Jews in the legal profession. Several Jewish members of the legislative drafting commission of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow have reportedly been arrested. The so-called International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the Moscow Collegium of Lawyers have been subjected to thorough screenings. Numerous Jewish members of both organizations are believed to have been disbarred, several of them arrested.
Last June 60 Jewish employees of the legal department of the Ministry of Railways, including the department chief, Erlich, were accused of falsifying accounts. Similar purge operations were reportedly carried out in other government ministries and throughout the entire civil service.
Moreover, government personnel departments proceeded to revise their lists of pensioners, depriving many disabled Jewish employees of their pensions on the grounds that their medical certificates contained false statements. Such charges also served as the point of departure for widespread accusations against Jewish members of the medical profession. The doctors recently accused of killing Politburo members Alexander Scherbakov and Andrei Zhdanov actually were arrested last June.
JEWS IN JOURNALISM INVESTIGATED; JEWISH EDITORS ACCUSED
Simultaneously Jews in journalism were subjected to thorough investigation. The staff of Tass, the official news agency, was carefully screened. The purgers also concentrated on the field of literature. All books written by Jewish authors in the 1948-52 period were subjected to microscopic scrutiny in an effort to discover traces of “anti-Soviet feelings and ideclogical deviations.” There was even talk of some form of literary conspiracy involving Jewish writers in Kiev.
In Kharkov, second city of the Ukraine, a number of prominent Jewish members of the Communist Party, including writers and editors, were accused of secret contacts with the Israeli Legation in Moscow.
Mass deportations of Jews according to the familiar Soviet deportation pattern began early last summer. Most of the deportees were shipped to the so-called Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidjan in eastern Siberia, near the Manchurian frontier. A large part of the area is given over to forced labor camps whose inmates are entirely Jewish. But even those Jews who are nominally free cannot leave their place of residence for more than 24 hours. The managers of all enterprises, including collective and state farms, are Russians.
Birobidjan is virtually isolated from the rest of the Soviet Union, as well as from the outside world. No one may enter or leave the region without special authorization. Newspapers and periodicals from other Soviet areas may not be introduced. The local press, published in both Russian and Yiddish, cannot be taken out of Birobidjan. According to estimates, about 30,000 deportees, mostly Jewish, have been brought to Birobidjan since 1949, the report 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.
