The lives of all Jews in East Berlin and in the East German Republic are in “acute danger, ” Albert Hirsch, a Jew from East Germany who recently fled to West Berlin, told a correspondent of the Manchester Guardian.
The Guardian correspondent today reports that “what appears to be a full-scale pogrom” is under way in Eastern Europe. The newspaper also reprints various press and radio statements villifying the Zionist movement carried in the satellite states since the Moscow accusation against nine “terrorist” doctors, six of whom are Jews.
The Guardian also suggests that Mr. Hirsch’s report may be responsible for a statement issued in East Germany by a Rabbi Martin Riesenberger who declared that there was no reason for alarm in East Germany. The Guardian correspondent estimates the number of Jews in East Berlin at 2,600 and the number in the entire Soviet zone of Germany at twice that figure.
Meanwhile, latest reports from East Germany stated that more political arrests occurred there last night, including that of a number of Jews. One of these Jews was identified as Dr. George Honigman, a writer on the East Berlin newspaper “Am Abend,” who spent part of the war years in London.
Louis Golding, noted British-Jewish author, today published an appeal to Joseph Stalin to put an end to the anti-Jewish campaign, warning that he should draw back “while there is yet time.” Mr. Golding declares that the “Jews are stronger now than the Jews whom your predecessors butchered in the pogroms of Kishinev. The six million Jews whom the Nazis exterminated in death trains and ovens are stronger now than when they were alive. The moral conscience of the whole world will be too much for you.”
The World Jewish Congress here issued a statement charging that the Moscow accusations against Jews is a “most virulent attack not only on the 2,500,000 Jews behind the Iron Curtain, but on Jews all over the world.” It vehemently protested the charges which it said were “reminiscent of similar charges in the dark Middle Ages.”
The British Labor Party, in a statement today, said that it “views with horror the anti-Semitic trends in Eastern Europe which are now being openly encouraged and emulated by the Soviet Union. ” The statement pointed out that “with the downfall of Hitler and the establishment of the State of Israel it was the hope of all free men that the long and cruel ordeal of the Jewish people was at last at an end. Events of the past few weeks have gravely endangered that hopeful prospect. “
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
