Communist Leader Condemns Trials; Says Emigration of Jews Politically Complicated

A Belgian Communist leader condemned yesterday the trials of Jews in the Soviet Union but said there were “political complications” which “force the USSR to be prudent” in permitting Russian Jews to emigrate to Israel. According to Mare Drumaux, chairman of the Belgian Communist Party, if emigration were allowed, “Soviet citizens arriving in Israel might find themselves fighting Soviet soldiers on the Egyptian side.” Drumaux was a participant in a special program on Soviet Jewry broadcast over Brussels Radio. Other participants were Prof. Robert Mizrachi of the Paris Sorbonne, Yves Cau of the French newspaper Figaro and Edwin Eytan, Paris correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Drumaux acknowledged that anti-Semitism survives “in certain circles within the Socialist countries.” He reminded the listeners that the Belgian Communist Party had criticized the Leningrad trial and the death sentences, later commuted, and had taken Soviet authorities to task for conducting the trial in secret.