Driving Nails into Body of Jewish Workman a New Soviet Factory Sport: Soviet Authorities Busy Trying

Three adult students and three officials of the Troitsk Technical School have been put on trial, the students for torturing a Jewish student named Fedotin by trying to drive nails into his body, and the officials for permitting such outrages on the school premises. One of the students confessed at the opening of the trial that Fedotin and also other Jewish students at the school were systematically tortured, "because they studied harder than we did".

The court is expected to pass severe sentences on the prisoners.

Other cases of factory antisemitism are reported from various parts of the country. In Krasnodar, in Northern Caucasus, for instance, a factory controller, named Altschuler, who is a Jew, complained that a worker named Prikhodenko was turning out poor work. Prikhodenko turned on Altschuler with a flow of antisemitic invective. Prikhodenko was put on trial and has been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.

In Simferopol six antisemites, who attacked a Jew named Peisach, who is a member of their Collective, have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from two years down to three months.

Antisemitism is also reported for the first time now from one of the summer resorts arranged by the Seviet Government ex-clusively for workers. At the workers’ rest club at Siverskoy Station, near Leningrad, the Trade Union organ "Nasha Gazeta" reports, one of the inmates, a woman named Vesiolova, went about agitating against Jewish workers being allowed to stay in the same home. The non-Jewish workers called a meeting, the paper says, and drew up a petition to the authorities of the home, asking for Vesiolova to be expelled. The petition was brought to the attention of the Trade Union authorities who control the home, and Vesiolova was expelled.

The Trade Unions are now starting a big cultural campaign in all the workers’ rest homes to eliminate antisemitism.

Not only Jews, but also Armenians are suffering from pogromists, according to a report which has arrived here from the Caucasus. Three workers in the Caucasian oil fields, Postrulin, Babishkin and Tkachenko, the report says, made a regular practice of persecuting Armenian workers. They even painted notices in the workers’ quarters calling for a pogrom against the Armenian workers. All three were arrested, and Postrulin and Tkachenke have been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, and Babishkin to one year imprisonment. The sentences were received with applause by the oil workers who attended the trial in large numbers, the report adds.