Communist Press of Minsk Publishes Charges Against Arrested Kehillah Leaders

While the Russian foreign office confirms the report that eleven of the fourteen leaders of the Minsk Jewish community have been released, the names of the three still under arrest have been refused. The Communist press in Minsk today prints the names of those arrested and the charges against each one, but the name of Chief Rabbi Menachem Gluskin is not included.

While the general charges are in accord with those published yesterday in the London “Times,” the individual charges are as follows: Benjamin Sakowizki, “a preacher with a crooked Talmudical mind who was sentenced to be shot in 1919 because of stock speculations, but he escaped. When business was bad he began trading with God, holding sermons and preaching ‘save our children from the fire that is destroying the Jewish people’.”

Jacob Mizes, the head of a rabbinical seminary, is accused of having headed a number of illegal seminaries. Simon Kabakov is charged with being a bourgeois ring leader. Krengel, an ex-jeweler and silversmith, is said to have utilized confiscated metal for making spoons and forks.

David Shachor, “an important ex-trader, was the organizer of clerical unions and rabbinical seminaries,” while David Salomon “is president of a society of rabbinical students which is an outspoken counter-revolutionary organization whose object is to fight the Soviet and at whose meetings anti-Soviet speeches were made and sometimes a sermon ending with ‘uva lezion goel,’ a dangerous Zionist slogan.”

Asher Kirshtein, a rabbi, is said to be “a speculator who established loan societies that supported nepmen from ruin, is a reactionary clerical and a counter-revolutionary enemy, an enemy to the workers and an active supporter of the illegal rabbinical clique.” Moses Gabrielov, “Rabbi Glsukin’s right-hand man, became chairman of the Jewish community when the White Poles arrived and hung a revolutionary. He helped the latter with his death-bed confession. Gabrielov is also a prominent member of the Agudath Israel and leader in the religious community.”

Iwianski, an ex-merchant, is accused of being “an industrialist in whose house during the search, correspondence was found with foreign Jewish counter-revolutionary organizations.” Braude is “an ex-millionaire banker who is terribly furious at the Bolshevists who took everything from him.” Rabbi Pevsner, of whom it is said “all illegal meetings met in his bath-house. The good Jew cried and sighed at the meetings, saying that the Bolshevists are hurting his soul and his spirit. He was the nerve center of the rabbinical anti-revolutoinary organization, maintaining and receiving instructions from the Fascist Zadik, Lebbavitcher Rebbe who sent instructions as to how to conduct the counter-revolutionary campaign in the Soviet Union and how to create illegal rabbinical seminaries. Such instructions were found in Pevsner’s house, signed by the Lebbavitcher Rebbe. The Fascist Zadik from Riga supplies all anti-Soviet organizations with information regarding the Soviet and his Minsk confederates transmitted the necessary material.”

Charges against Rabbinovitch are that he was a “well known itinerant preacher and a cunning person who camouflages his poisonous counter-revolutionary sermons with examples and stories. With his Jesuit speeches he incites villages and towns against Bolshevists.” Gordon is charged with being “a leader in the students’ organization who preached that the Jewish position is no better than in Egypt or in Spain under the Inquisition and argued that it is necessary to fight unbelievers. He also travelled in the provinces and delivered inciting harangues.”

Moseh Chaim Levine is accused of being “a preacher who created a rabbinical seminary in Preobranka, a suburb of Minsk, where a copy of a letter addressed abroad was found in which he said, ‘I repeatedly requested your help. You must know that the Jewish population is suffering hunger, need and troubles. Why have you deserted us? Save us’.”