El Mercurio Letter Denied

A report that a newspaper in Santiago, “El Mercurio,” carried a letter to the editor this week referring to a “Jewish Communist conspiracy” in Chile that had to be destroyed, was categorically denied today by Dr. Gil Sinay, president of the Representative Committee of Chilean Jews.

In a telephone conversation with Mark Turkow, secretary of the Latin American Jewish Congress, Dr. Sinay said that in fact El Mercurio published an item yesterday dealing with the participation of the Chilean rabbinate in an ecumenical service Tuesday marking the 163rd anniversary of Chile’s independence. The service was attended by leaders of the present government and three former presidents of Chile.

PAPER CARRIES RABBI KREIMAN’S STATEMENT

Dr. Sinay also reported that El Mercurio reproduced a statement by Rabbi Angel Kreiman in which he expressed adherence to a call by the leaders of the Catholic and Protestant faiths in the country for peace and concord. Dr. Sinay reiterated to Tuakow the statement he made Monday that the Jewish community in Chile has no problems of any kind and that its activities are normal.

(The publication of the letter was reported earlier this week by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto on its radio news feature program “As It Happens.” A spokesman for CBC told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in New York today that this report came from a free lance correspondent in Santiago who had been asked to confirm an earlier report received by CBC that such a letter had appeared. The CBC spokesman explained, however, that the program may not have made it sufficiently clear that anti-Semitic articles and propaganda in newspapers had appeared before the military coup occurred last week but not since then,–Dr. Sinay reported on these pre-coup articles by opponents of the Allende Administration in the Sept. 12 issue of the Daily News Bulletin.)