Criticism of the Soviet Union for publication by a Ukrainian Academy of Science of a virulently anti-Semitic pamphlet spread today to French groups usually friendly to the Soviet Union. L’Express, a left-wing weekly which usually supports the official Soviet line, published a severely critical two page review of “Judaism Without Embellishment.”
The newspaper has a circulation of 250,000 mostly among France’s leading intellectuals. It reprinted three of the cartoons from the Kiev booklet, describing them as “worthy of Der Sturmer”–the newspaper published by Julius Streicher, the most rabid of the Nazi anti-Semites. L’Express also discussed the latest anti-Jewish developments in Russia, describing in detail the “economic trials” in which many Jews have been condemned to death and executed as “innocent scapegoats.”
Le Monde, the influential daily newspaper, also reviewed the Soviet pamphlet, asking: “Can Jews read without fear the book printed by the Ukrainian Academy, in which synagogues are described as dens of black-marketeers and in which the cartoons recall those published by the Nazis during the war?”
Other French dailies and weeklies also discussed the pamphlet, stressing particularly the stand taken by the “Neue Presse,” organ of the Jewish section of the French Communist party, which broke away from Communist discipline to express “shock” about the Kiev book.
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