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Renewed Soviet Anti-semitism Seen Wrecking Hopes for Russian Jews

September 27, 1968
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An American rabbi said today that hopes for more liberal treatment of Soviet Jews, raised by last spring’s visit here of Moscow’s Chief Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin, have been “blotted out” by renewed Soviet anti-Semitism. According to Rabbi Israel Miller, chairman of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, official anti-Semitism in the USSR manifested itself recently in charges of “Zionist conspiracy” in Czechoslovakia and the beatings of Soviet citizens protesting the Czech invasion by police “howling ‘Zhid (Jews), beat them.” Rabbi Miller announced that demonstrations would be held in 20 cities on Oct. 13 to protest the Soviet anti-Semitism.

Other signs of officially inspired anti-Semitic incitement, according to Rabbi Miller, were an article in the Soviet Army daily Red Star which accused Soviet Jews of dual loyalty and charges of “Zionist conspiracy” in Komsomolskaya Pravda, the Communist youth newspaper. Rabbi Miller said that a new anti-Semitic tract appeared last week by the former Nazi collaborator Trofim Kitchko, whose anti-Semitic volume, “Judaism Without Embellishment,” was banned several years ago by Soviet authorities.

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