Chicago Jewish Editor Sees Soviet Jewry Disappearing Within 15 Years

J. L. Fishbein, editor and publisher of The Sentinel, 50 year old Chicago English-Jewish weekly, returning today from a three week fact finding tour of the major Jewish communities of the U.S.S.R. reported that “Jewish life in Russia is now virtually at an end.”

Mr. Fishbein said that he had been unable to pinpoint direct evidences of Russian anti-Semitism, although, “no Jews are in high political or state office.” Apparently, he said, “as long as you do not seek to perpetuate your Jewishness, there is no discrimination. The old people and the remaining synagogues are tolerated much in the manner of museums. Prayer books and other objects of worship are not imported or produced. Most of the Siddurs we saw were yellowed with age. It is quite obvious to any observer that what Hitler was unable to accomplish by force, the Soviet Union will achieve within a matter of the next ten or 15 years — namely the disappearance of its Jewry.”

He asserted that only one synagogue remains in even the largest Jewish centers and that these are visited only by old people who have not been indoctrinated with the anti-religious propaganda of the state. “Even these”, he declared, “live in constant fear that their motives may be misunderstood. Anxious for news concerning Jews in Israel and the United States, they nevertheless hesitated to speak freely to us. They indicated quite clearly that there were informers among them who would report any untoward act or conversation.”

The young people, according to Mr. Fishbein, are completely assimilated, intermarry without hesitation, and will have nothing to do with Jewish religious life. No other form of Jewish cultural or organizational activity exists. A literary bimonthly magazine, printed in Yiddish is scheduled to appear this month, the first such publication since 1948.