The charge that Soviet authorities have done nothing to apprehend or punish local officials in two cities in the Uzbek Republic where tales of “blood rituals” led to riots in 1961 and 1962 against the Jews of those communities was made today by Label A. Katz, president of B’nai B’rith, at a press conference here.
Mr. Katz said that mob riots, sparked by dissemination of the ancient anti-Semitic superstition, terrorized the Jews of Margelan, 100 miles from Tashkent, capital of the Uzbek Republic, two days after Rosh Hashana in 1961, and the Jews of Tashkent shortly after Passover last year.
B’nai B’rith had received reports of scores of Jews being assaulted and injured in the streets and in their homes during wild scenes of mob violence, abetted by local authorities, he declared. He said those authorities remained passive or sided with the attackers when Jewish homes were broken into and furniture and personal belongings looted or destroyed.
Mr. Katz emphasized that B’nai B’rith had withheld disclosure of the riots until it was able to authenticate information filtering out of the Soviet Union for almost a year. He added that no information on the outrages was reported in the provincial or major Soviet newspapers and that no reprimand or punishment had been handed out publicly to the instigators of the violence or the police officials and local prosecutors who abetted the perpetrators.
In the pogroms in Uzbek, where Moslems are the dominant religious group, the libel was altered to refer to the use of Moslem, rather than Christian blood, as having been used for religious rituals during the Jewish holidays.
ANTI-JEWISH RIOTS LASTED SIX DAYS IN UZBEK TOWN
According to the B’nai B’rith leader, on September 14, 1961, an inflamed group in Margelan seized a Jewish woman, Mazol Yusupova, and accused her of having kidnapped and killed the two-year-old son of Abdusaterov, who led the mob, as part of a “ritual murder.” The woman was forcibly dragged to the office of the local militia where, in the presence of police officials, she was formally charged with abduction and murder.
On orders of a Captain Akhmedov, a militia officer, militia members, accompanied by the rowdies, conducted a wild search of the Jewish woman’s home, damaging furniture and other possessions and seizing foods and kitchenware, allegedly for further investigation, Similar searches were conducted in dozens of other Jewish homes.
The following morning, police arrested Dzhuru Israelov, Mrs, Yusupova’s 90-year-old father, Mr. Katz said. As word spread throughout Margelan that Jews had been arrested for kidnapping and murdering a Moslem child for Jewish ritual purposes, mob fury broke out in waves of violent assaults against Jews in the streets and in their homes. Given no police protection, the Jews of Margelan hastily organized a guard to protect the Jewish quarter, an act which led to increasing fury in clashes between the Jewish defenders and gangs of Uzbeks roaming the streets. After six days of rioting, authorities finally posted police guards to restore order, Mr. Katz said.
Three weeks later, the first official explanation in the case appeared in the local Uzbek newspaper, “Margelan Khakikati,. ” The newspaper reported that the Abdusaterov boy had been kidnapped–by an Uzbek woman named Usmanova who lived in a nearby village and wanted to hide from her husband the fact that she had undergone an abortion. On a visit to Margelan, she abducted the child and presented him to her husband–from whom she had been separated for several years–as her own. The official story contained no mention of the riots and no effort to dispel the blood libel which had sparked them.
JEWS REPORTED STILL LIVING IN AN ATMOSPHERE OF FEAR
The Jews who had been assaulted by the mobs or mistreated by police brought suit against Abdusatarov in a trial which began on November 14 in nearby Gorchakovo. The court found that the Margelan prosecutor had ignored the role of the militia in the riot and had minimized the extent of destruction of Jewish property by the rioters. The court also ruled that the searches and arrests were illegal, halted the trial and ordered the prosecutor to correct his file of evidence for another trial.
Mr. Katz stressed that, in the 14 months since, there has been no word of a second trial. On the other hand, he added, it was known that the police involved in the anti-Semitic riots have retained their Jobs and that the Jews of Margelan continue to live in an atmosphere of fear and insecurity.
In the blood libel in Tashkent, which began on May 9, 1962, he said, an Uzbek Moslem named Azizov led a band which broke into the home of Abigai Bangieva, a 70-year-old woman who operates a small shop in Tashkent. The attackers accused her of having taken blood from the ear of Azizov’s young daughter to be used “in a Passover ritual, ” and on the basis of this charge, the local prosecutor ordered her arrest. Her home was ransacked by police and she was held for three weeks. To this day, Mr. Katz said, the legal complaint against her has not been dismissed.
Following the arrest, inflammatory rumors swept the city, which has 50,000 Jews. One report said that Azizov’s wife, a member of the local Soviet, had demanded the expulsion of all Tashkent Jews. Another quoted the prosecutor as asserting, in private conversation, that Jews customarily used Moslem blood for religious purposes. The wild stories led to uncontrolled assaults on Jews and brought panic in the Tachkent Jewish section.
Mr. Katz said it was later learned that the blood libel had originated from a minor mishap on April 30, when the Azizov girl, leaving Mrs. Bangieva’s shop, had slipped and fallen and suffered a slight cut on one ear. Mr. Katz said that Tashkent Jews have since lived in apprehension.
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.
