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Communist Party in Italy Denounces Soviet Anti-semitic Book

March 26, 1964
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The Communist Party of Italy followed today the lead of the Communist parties of France and the United States in denouncing “Judaism Without Embellishment, ” the anti-Semitic book published by the Ukrainian Academy of Science.

The Italian party took its stand in its newspaper, “Paese Sera, ” which declared editorially that no excuses could justify the pamphlet’s “classical anti-Semitic” cartoons. The editorial echoed Western charges that the cartoons were reminiscent of those published by Julius Streicher, most rabid of the Nazis, in his “Der Stuermer,” The editorial said the cartoons were inexcusable regardless of the text.

The editorial asked the Soviet Government to “isolate” copies of the book which, it said, in the final analysis spreads anti-Soviet propaganda, on the basis of Soviet laws banning anti-Semitism.

In the same issue, the Moscow correspondent of the newspaper reported that the quantities of matzch baked in the Soviet capital would not satisfy the needs of Moscow’s Jews. The correspondent warned that “bureaucratic restrictions” on matzoh provisions tended to deny the value of Soviet affirmations of religious freedom in the Soviet Union.

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