Outstanding American medical practitioners and researchers of all faiths today urged the United Nations to establish immediately an impartial international committee to examine the accusations against nine prominent physicians in Soviet Russia who face trial in Moscow on charges of murder or attempted murder.
This request was contained in a petition submitted to U.N. Secretary General Trygve Lie by Dr. Bela Schick, discoverer of the Schick Test, and Dr. Paul Klemperer, pathologist. The petition bore the signatures of more than 120 doctors in 32 cities throughout the United States, including Dr. Otto Loewi, Nobel Prize winner, and chiefs of hospitals and research foundations as well as means of the medical colleges. The petition reads:
“Nine prominent physicians in Soviet Russia, some of them holding posts of academic distinction, will shortly be tried in Moscow for murder or attempted murder. They have been accused of exploiting their status as physicians to commit crimes on the ‘instigation’ of the American Joint Distribution Committee, a non-partisan Jewish relief organization, which the Moscow press characterizes as a tool of American imperialism.
“In accordance with the familiar pattern, these physicians may be expected to confess their ‘guilt’ at the trial, which will this time only use anti-Semitism as a tool for the devious purposes of the Kremlin, but will impugn the honor and moral an inquiry into the accusations by an impartial body is a compelling obligation of the citizens of a democratic society, and urge upon the United Nations the immediate establishment of an international committee for this purpose.”
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.
