The death penalty for 11 Jews who faced the long secret trial in Moscow on charges of “economic crimes” was requested by the prosecution at the conclusion of the trial last Friday, according to reports reaching here today from Moscow. Another Jew involved in this trial, listed as Shakerman, had already been sentenced to death earlier in the week as the “ring leader” of the group.
For each of the 12 non-Jews involved in the trial the prosecution asked prison terms of 15 years. The sentences for the 23 are expected to be issued within a few days, the Moscow reports indicated. The trial, originally expected to be a “show trial,” lasted several weeks and was held in camera.
Izvestia, official organ of the Soviet Government, revealed that the accused were arrested following a denunciation to the police by a relative of Shakerman, whom the newspaper described as a “former doctor.” The arrests were made last October, according to the newspaper, which claimed that the ringleaders of the group were Jewish, blaming them as Shakerman, Roifman, Galperin and Braslavsky.
Izvestia had charged that the defendants were part of a ring which operated a subrosa knitting mill in the workshop of a neurological institute in a Moscow suburb. The group allegedly acquired 58 knitting machines and 460 tons of raw wool from illegal sources and the goods allegedly were sold at markets and train stations with the compliance of agents of a government unit who allegedly had been bribed.
In calling for a “show trial,” Izvestia said it was citing the fact that some of the defendants were Jews “because we do not pay attention to malicious slanders aroused in the western press from time to time. They are tried as criminals–not as Jews, Russians. Tartars or Ukrainians.”
Since July 1961, when death sentences were reintroduced in the Soviet Union for economic crimes, it is estimated that around 190 persons have been tried, convicted and executed on such charges. Of these, at least 95 were reported to have had obviously Jewish names and 11 others were thought to be Jewish.
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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.
