A Soviet television detective series entitled “Delo Vedutzmatski” (It is in expert hands) featured three successive shows with Jewish criminals, according to reports received by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry. In the last three programs in June 1978, the villains had Jewish names, accents and stereotyped mannerisms. The plots featured rape, murder and embezzlement. In each show, Soviet investigators successfully solved the crime.
In the murder, the Jews were depicted as being too cowardly to execute the crime themselves. Russians were hired to do the “dirty work” for them. A spokesman for the Conference warned that the use of such officially-inspired anti-Semitism would spill over into popular anti-Semitism feeling. “These shows are in the worst anti-Semitic tradition. We demand the cessation of such programs as part of every Soviet Jew’s God-given right to live a true Jewish life without fear.”
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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.
