The Soviet drive against Jews was condemned by the Michigan Catholic in an editorial calling on the Catholics of America to voice their indignation over “this latest Soviet atrocity.”
“The recent wave of anti-Semitism that has broken out in the Iron Curtain countries horrifies every decent person,” the editorial says. “Our sympathy is intensified, for one reason, because many of its current victims, who survived Hitler’s pogroms, now are undergoing a second siege. It is bad enough that the Soviet tyrants should persecute those who offend their masters by holding unorthodox opinions. Those who cling to deviationist views in religion, politics or economics have at least the theoretical chance of recanting or at least simulating external conformity. But even this slim hope of escape is denied the Jew. He cannot apostatize from his race. He cannot divest himself of his Jewishness.”
The paper emphasizes that “there is no truth whatsoever in the weird explanation now being advanced by some of our professional anti-Semites. One of these home-grown hate-mongers has come forward with the thesis that there is actually no real persecution of Jews in the Soviet countries. This is merely a ruse, he says, to arouse sympathy for Jews in the western nations and to gain them greater freedom to plot on behalf of Soviet Russia. This wicked lie,” the paper continues, “is merely a new twist to the ancient detraction that would identify all Jews with Communism.”
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.
