Leaders of major Jewish organizations continued their testimony here before the House Committee on Communist Aggression today emphasizing the at Jewish culture is being wiped out in the Soviet Union while Zionism is banned in all Communist countries.
Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the American Jewish Congress, appearing before the Committee, charged that “the shadow of doom lies over the spiritual survival of 2,500,000 Jews in Soviet lands.” Yiddish newspapers, he testified, ceased publication, Yiddish writers disappeared and other Yiddish institutions were shut down.
“Sympathy for Zionism not only remained a crime, as it had been for many years, but the accusation of Zionism directed sometimes against persons who had been bitter opponents of it, became an important weapon in the armory with which the masters of the moment struck down potential rivals,” Dr. Goldstein declared, adding that the false indictment of the Jewish doctors was later admitted by the Soviet leaders to be part of a plan to stir up racial animosity.
He pointed out that while the USSR supported the establishment of Israel at the United Nations, Zionism continued to be banned and suspected Zionists continued to be jailed and sent to forced labor camps. The answer to this “glaring contradiction,” he said, was political expediency, but more important, the “fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the Jewish conception of life and humanity and that which is embodied in the dogma on which the Soviet Government professes to be based.”
JEWISH LABOR COMMITTEE, WAR VETERANS ALSO TESTIFY
Jewish Labor Committee vice-chairman Jacob Zukerman told the House Committee that “the Kremlin, while it piously pronounces peaceful co-existence between itself and other nations, has, in effect, declared a war of destruction against the remaining vestiges of the Jewish communities under their geographical domination. ” He cited several examples of cultural genocide against the Jews, their institutions, in the Soviet Union and satellite nations.
Mr. Zukerman called for a United Nations investigation into charges made earlier by the Jewish Labor Committee that the Soviet Union had failed to answer requests made by the organization demanding to know the fate of some half million Jewish refugees whose whereabouts have never been accounted for by the Soviets. Mr. Zukerman said that over 200 Jewish writers had similarly vanished in the Soviet Union.
Benjamin Kaufman, testifying on behalf of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America, of which he is national executive director, pointed out that the JWV was “never fooled by the Communist propagandist who glibly extolled the tolerance of Communism with respect to races and religions.” He told the committee of some of the positive programs undertaken by the JWV to educate its members and all Americans as to the “dangers and pitfalls of Communism. “
Herschel Weinrauch. former Red Army officer and editor of an official Yiddish newspaper in Birobidjan during the, 1930 testified yesterday that the settlement of Birobidjan by Jews was used by the Communists to mulct millions of dollars from Americans in cash, equipment and machinery meant for the Jewish region. He also declared that of some 600,000 Jews sent from Poland to Siberia in 1939 only 150,000 have been accounted for and the remaining 450,000 “just vanished” by the war’s end in 1945.
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.
