The opinion that the Soviet Government may resume diplomatic relations with Israel prior to the contemplated trip to the Middle East by United States Secretary of State John Foster Dallas was expressed here today by ranking diplomats.
Secretary Dulles plans to leave for a flying visit to Israel and the Arab countries about May 10. Observers here believe that now that Moscow has called off its Anti-Jewish campaign, the Kremlin may attempt to counter Mr. Dallas’ trip by resuming relations with Israel, which were broken off at the height of the Anti-Semitic drive in the Communist countries.
Great significance was attached here to the editorial published in Moscow’s Pravda yesterday and reprinted in the official government newspaper Izvestia today attributing the frame up of the 15 physicians in Moscow to a desire on the part of the former Deputy Minister of State Security, a man named Ryumin, to stimulate racial animosity. At least six of the physicians were Jews. All 15 were arrested on the charge that they plotted the death of Soviet leaders on instructions from the Joint Distribution Committee and Zionist groups abroad.
U.N. DEBATE ON SOVIET ANTI-SEMITISM TO BE “MODIFIED”
The editorial also disclosed the complete exoneration of the late Solomon Mikhoels, onetime director of the Moscow Jewish State Theatre and president of the dissolved Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, who was originally branded as the “agent” who delivered the alleged orders from the Joint Distribution Committee to the physicians. The editorial emphasized that “a careful investigation” has established that “the honest public figure of People’s Artist of the USSR, Solomon Mikhoels, was slandered.”
The exoneration of Mr. Mikhoels is considered in United Nations circles as complete exoneration of the Joint. Distribution Committee. (Edward M. M. Warburg, JDC chairman, refused to comment on the Soviet action until he had received “further information” and had consulted the members of the JDC board.) It is also believed here that Moscow would like to prevent any debate on Soviet Anti-Semitism which was expected to take place this week at the U.N. General Assembly.
In view of Moscow’s surprise exoneration of the 15 Soviet doctors and of Mr. Mikhoels, and also because of the Pravda editorial which emphasized that “any kind of preaching of race or national racists or hatred or scorn is punishable by law,” it was predicted here today that the charges of Anti-Semitism against the Soviet Union will be strongly “modified” during the debate, if such debate takes place during the scheduled discussion of a Polish proposal on means of improving international relations. The principal attack on the Soviet anti-Jewish policy was to have come from Mrs. Golda Myerson, Israel’s Labor Minister, who came especially from Tel Aviv to address the United Nations on this subject.
(From Moscow it was reported today that Ryumin, the high Soviet official responsible for the falsification of the case against the doctors, had been arrested. Pravda referred to him as a “criminal adventurer”. Sernyon Ignatiev, Ryumin’s superior and Minister of State Security at the time of the arrest of the physicians has been removed from the post of secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR. He was accused of “political blindness and gullibility” in accepting the case built up by Ryumin.)
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.
