Anti-Semitic leaflet stuffed in 200,000 Russian mailboxes

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MOSCOW, March 30 (JTA) — About 200,000 residents of the southern Russian region of Volgograd found anti-Semitic leaflets in their mailboxes last week. The flier, which contained various anti-Semitic slogans, also made references to members of the Russian Cabinet and other top Russian officials who are Jewish. The leaflet claimed that Russia is an occupied country with no ethnic Russians in the federal government. “Only [Russian] patriots are the people. The rest are slaves,” it said. One can tell who a “real Russian” is by relying on “racial signs,” the handout also said. The leaflet called on local voters to support the editor of a local anti-Semitic newspaper in the upcoming elections for Volgograd’s regional legislature. The weekly newspaper Kolokol, or The Bell, is published in Volgograd, a city of 1 million located 900 miles south of Moscow. The paper has been a forum for anti-Semitic propaganda for five years. The Volgograd Jewish community, which numbers 5,000, has expressed its deep concern over the publication, which is distributed free of charge in Volgograd’s working-class neighborhoods. The newspaper’s editor, Stanislav Terentyev, recently faced in a local court charges of inciting national hatred.

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