U.S. Communists Urge Moscow to “explain” Soviet Anti-semitism

A request that the Soviet Government should issue a public statement explaining what has actually happened to the leaders of Jewish cultural life in the USSR, who are the elements guilty of their liquidation, and what is being done now by the Soviet authorities to restore Jewish cultural life and to make certain that there will be no “violation” of the Soviet constitution with regard to rational minorities in the future was the subject today of an editorial in the Freiheit, pro-Communist Yiddish daily newspaper published here.

American Communists were instructed yesterday by the Daily Worker, official organ of the Communist Party in the United States, to call for an explanation by Soviet leaders who shared the responsibility for anti-Semitism practiced under Stalin. In a column-long editorial, the Daily Worker expressed “indignation” at the fact that Jewish intellectuals had been “framed up and executed” in the Soviet Union and that “Jewish culture has virtually been wiped out.” The editorial also expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with the fact that “the Soviet leaders have not offered any explanation of what took place.”