American Jewish groups have welcomed reports that the chief prosecutor in Moscow has initiated criminal investigations into the anti-Semitic activities of the ultranationalist group Pamyat.
The action follows a deluge of anti-Semitic threats and actions that have paralyzed Soviet Jews with fear.
The Soviet news agency Tass quoted the popular newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta on Wednesday as reporting that the Moscow prosecutor’s office had launched criminal proceedings against Pamyat, “which is charged with inciting national and racial hatred and strife.”
The specific reason for the action, Tass said, was Pamyat’s planned program to “de-Zionize” the country. The program was outlined in an article in Energetika, the official newspaper of the Moscow Energy Institute. The paper condemned Pamyat’s campaign.
Tass said the Interior Ministry is investigating Pamyat’s break-in and roughing-up of members of the House of Writers in Moscow last month, which Tass called a pogrom.
The ministry is also looking into the “irresponsible handling of the militants by law enforcement bodies,” Tass said.
According to Pamyat’s program, “Jews and their relatives” should be denied the right “to defend dissertations, to acquire knowledge and get academic titles, to join the Soviet Communist Party” and “must not be appointed to leading party, government and other posts.”
‘STEP IN RIGHT DIRECTION’
In New York, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith said it was “encouraged” by the report of the Pamyat investigation.
Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director, said, “We hope that the prosecutor’s actions will send a strong message that anti-Semitism is not going to be tolerated.”
In Washington, Mark Levin, associate executive director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, described the Soviet prosecutor’s decision as “a step in the right direction.” But he added, “We hope it doesn’t stop there.”
Micah Naftalin, national director of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, likewise called it “very welcome news, if it’s followed up.”
He cautioned, however, that “it isn’t the first time the government has threatened to do this. But as far as we know, they haven’t ever prosecuted and convicted for these charges.”
He expressed hope Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev will personally “take the leadership with respect to the rise in anti-Semitism.”
The Soviet Interior Ministry sought to allay fears in a statement Wednesday. “Rumors of Jewish pogroms disseminated in the mass media have no grounds whatsoever,” Tass quoted the ministry as saying. “Moreover, they mislead the public and can serve to promote ethnic strife and destabilization in several regions of the country.”
Said Naftalin, “We hope they’re right that the reports are groundless, but there has been an almost exponential growth of threats and warnings throughout much of the Soviet Union.”
MORE RUMORS OF POGROMS
Jews in various cities in the Soviet Union have reported hearing that a pogrom would be mounted Feb. 25, said Lynn Singer, executive director of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry.
In Minsk, some Jews reported that Pamyat had placed posters in the city threatening a pogrom for Feb. 26, said Rena Schwartz, director of special projects for the Greater New York Coalition for Soviet Jewry.
Herbert Block, a liaison between New York Mayor David Dinkins and the Jewish community, who was in Minsk last week, said, “Everyone whom I talked to in Minsk and throughout the Soviet Union is afraid.”
Block also said a Jewish cemetery in Minks is being torn up by the municipality to build a sports field. “There are tombstones piled up and scattered around. Part of the cemetery has been leveled and cleared, and there were actually bones that were visible in places.”
Meanwhile, some 500 Jews in Leningrad have signed an appeal addressed to the Supreme Council of the USSR, the Leningrad Council of People’s Deputies, the Leningrad chief prosecutor, Israeli government, Jewish organizations worldwide and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
“We are addressing you because our lives and the lives of our children are in danger,” it says.
The petition calls for government action to punish the perpetrators of racist activity, guarantee personal security and freedom of national life to all the Jews of the USSR, and permit “free emigration from the USSR to any country of the world which agrees to take them.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
