Congressional Committee Starts Hearings on Red Anti-semitism

Congressional hearings on “the persecution of the Jewish people under Communism” were started here today by the House Committee on Communist Aggression headed by Rep. Charles J. Kersten of Wisconsin. The hearings, at which leaders of major Jewish organizations will testify, scheduled to last two days, are being held at the Federal Court House here.

Irving M. Engel, president of the American Jewish Committee, and Henry Edward Schultz, national chairman of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League here, were the first to testify today. They charged that despite the Kremlin’s “new look,” Soviet authorities continue to sentence many hundreds of Jewish leaders to long prison terms. They will be followed tomorrow by leaders of the American Jewish Congress, Jewish Labor Committee and other Jewish organizations.

In his testimony today, Mr. Engel charged the Communist countries with reviving anti-Semitism “as an instrument of government policy”; sabotaging restitution to Jewish victims of Nazism in satellite countries by falsely labeling these survivors of concentration camps as “Germans”; destroying all Jewish communal institutions, including those rebuilt by the efforts of the local Jewish population with the help of American welfare organizations.

AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE PRESIDENT LISTS ANTI-JEWISH ACTS

The American Jewish Committee president also charged that the Communist governments have destroyed all Jewish religious life in Russia and the satellites, leaving only isolated synagogues for “show” purposes; expropriated Jewish hospitals, orphan asylums, dispensaries and old people’s homes, and put them to Communist use; prompted “bloody pogroms” in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Rumania, resulting in the death of hundreds of innocent Jews; imprisoned without charge hundreds of Jewish leaders, leaving them to rot without trial for many years in filthy Communist jails; pauperized the Jewish population in Russia and the satellites, then deported thousands into unsettled areas with no food or means of shelter.

He said that the secret purge trials and sentencing of Jews was continuing up to the present time. At trials in Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Hungary, he added, hundreds of Zionists and other former leaders of Jewish communities–imprisoned since 1948 and 1949–have been sentenced to life or many years in prison “for collecting money for Zionist causes, organizing emigration to Israel, and similar activities–all of which were completely legal and sometimes even encouraged by the authorities at the time they were conducted.”

“All this is going on, ” he charged, “despite the international obligations the governments of Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria undertook in peace treaties and in spite of the guarantees of equality in the constitutions of these enslaved countries.” Mr. Engel thanked the Kersten Committee in behalf of the AJC “for the opportunity to help counter the fraudulent Communist propaganda about the alleged respect for human rights in the Soviet empire and to reveal the truth about the totalitarian regimes.”

A, D. L. LEADER DESCRIBES PERSECUTION OF B’NAI B’RITH

Mr. Schultz in his testimony described the plight of B’nai B’rith lodges and their members behind the Iron Curtain. “While B’nai B’rith never existed in Russia proper, it flourished in Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Austria, as well as Germany, until the outbreak of war, “he said. “There were ten B’nai B’rith lodges in prewar Poland; six in Czechoslovakia; five in Bulgaria; and 50 in Austria and Germany.

“Those of our people who survived the Nazis were victimized by a cruel and ironic fate. They were given much to hope for from a war of liberation But they were liberated from one evil only to be caught in the noose of another. After their freedom from the Nazi yoke, these B’nai B’rith members labored to form some semblance of a Jewish community, and re-established lodges in Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Bulgaria. During this same period a new lodge was founded in Budapest, numbering about 2,000 members. Its existence, however, was short-lived.

“The Communist regimes, under one pretext or another, arrested the B’nai B’rith leadership, confiscated B’nai B’rith property and and totally wiped out every vestige of B’nai B’rith organizational life,” the ADL leader continued. “In Eastern Europe, B’nai B’rith worked hand-in-hand with agencies representing other faiths to help those who needed it, despite their religious affiliation. In Hungary, for example, Catholics and Jews established a joint relief program.

“We labor under severe handicaps in seeking to help our, B’nai B’rith members behind the Iron Curtain. Many of them are suffering acutely at the hands of their Communist tormentors. It is well-nigh impossible to get any funds through to help these unfortunates and the Communist authorities block any move to aid them to emigrate, ” Mr. Schultz declared.

JEWISH LEADERS FROM HUNGARY, RUMANIA, AUSTRIA TESTIFY

Another witness at today’s session was Dr. Frederic Gerog, leader of the Jews in Hungary who was also the head of the Joint Distribution Committee office in Budapest between 1945 and 1948. He testified that after Communist pressure on the organization, JDC headquarters in New York agreed to give five percent of the total relief expenditures of the JDC in Hungary to non-sectarian relief. He said the organization was infiltrated by spies for the authorities.

Isaac Glickman, now president of the United Rumanian Jews of America, described how the Rumanian Minister of Religion, a non-Jew, appointed the Chief Rabbi of Rumania. Mr. Glickman was head of the Jewish relief committee in Bucharest between. 1945 and 1948. Other witnesses were Bronislaw Teichloz one-time chairman of the International Committee for Jewish Refugees in Vienna, who said that during the war the Russians sent some 50, 000 Jews from the Lwow area to Siberia; and Herschel Weinrath, former newspaper editor in Birobidjan, Moscow and Bialystok and once a First Lieutenant in the Red Army.