Moscow Report Gives Complete Picture of Anti-jewish Restrictions

An authentic eye-witness picture of Jewish life in the Soviet Union is presented in a report from Moscow published in the “New Republic,” American liberal weekly, which appeared today. The report establishes that “there is no doubt that the Soviet Government discriminates against its Jews even though the precise rules of such discrimination are obviously considered top secret.”

“On the basis of my experience and my conversations with Jews of different standing in the Soviet Union, I can affirm that Jews are barred from the Air Force and Navy officers’ corps,” the author of the report, Philippe Ben, a French journalist, writes. “Exceptionally, they are permitted in the regular Red Army officers’ corps in those professions where Jews still predominate greatly, that is, the medical profession and in certain scientific research groups.

“Jews are also barred from membership in various Communist Party units, especially the cadre and propaganda section. It is quite certain, too, that no Jews are now being admitted to the central party papers and they are particularly excluded from the foreign section of the Soviet press. They are never sent abroad as correspondents for Soviet papers, radio or Tass Agency. Old-timers in the press, however, are not discriminated against.

“While the number of Jewish students being admitted to universities is obviously restricted and limited, the application of this measure varies from place to place and even from school to school. Despite all restrictions, Jewish students are to be found everywhere, sometimes even in fair numbers. For example, Leningrad’s school of music has a considerable number of Jewish students and there are also many Jews in the Leningrad faculty of medicine, in various technical institutes, and in the philology faculty, where foreign languages are being taught.

“In Moscow, the number of Jews in Moscow University is said to have been reduced again this year although it was already much less than 10 percent, the percentage of the Jewish population in Moscow to the general population. Yet in Kiev, where discrimination against Jews is believed to be greatest, there are a number of Jewish students in many university schools, although probably the figure is less than the relation of Jewish and non-Jewish populations in the town would warrant. There are also Jewish students in Riga and Lvow.”

STRONG ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE UKRAINE; TRIAL PROVOKES FEAR AMONG JEWS

The report reveals that “in the Ukraine the anti-Semitic current, always very strong, has now been further stimulated.” It says that there is apparently a trend in the Ukraine to demonstrate to public opinion that too many Jews occupy important posts and that they “misuse their authority.” Wide publicity was given lately in the Ukrainian press to a trial in Kiev of 35 people. The published list of names of the defendants indicated that 32 of them are Jews.

“The trial provoked a new wave of anti-Jewish feelings and great uneasiness among the Jews all over the Ukraine,” the report says. It discloses that sentences in this trial ranged from 5 to 20 years, and a few women got very long prison terms. The defendants, all employes of a factory, were accused of “stealing goods worth millions of rubles.” They included the general manager, several of his assistants, a number of engineers and some of their wives.

With regard to the ban on Jewish culture, the report brings out the following facts: In the whole Soviet Union there is only one newspaper in Yiddish, a weekly in Birobidjan, printed on four tiny pages and carrying only reprints from the local Russian paper. The circulation of this weekly is only a few thousand, and subscriptions from any other part of the Soviet Union are not accepted. The local radio station in Birobidjan broadcasts only a one-hour program in Yiddish once a week. The only other instance where Yiddish is permitted is in concerts of Yiddish songs. These take place in many of the main Soviet towns, usually a few times a year. The number of the singers is very limited.

Only three have appeared in Moscow in recent years. The songs seem to have been selected to make the audience realize how miserable and backward Jewish culture was, the report says. “The ban on anything printed an Yiddish is so strict that even announcements of the Yiddish song concerts appearing on the walls in Moscow and other town are in Russian only and the Yiddish names of the songs are being printed in Russian characters. The fiction is maintained that Russian Jews no longer understand Yiddish. So, at every concert of Yiddish songs there is an announcer in Russian who explains the subject of every song.

POSITION OF JEWS IN RUSSIA EXPECTED TO BECOME MORE DIFFICULT

Mr. Ben says in his report that an unusual number of Jews in Moscow who have never been to a synagogue before, who had no previous connection with religion, and who did not understand the meaning of the religious ritual or prayers–people in their thirties and forties as well as young adults, teen-agers and school children–attended the High Holiday services this year. “Especially striking,” he reports, “was the appearance of these people

“I spoke to several people and asked them the reason for their coming. The explanations they offered amounted in fact to an admission of a feeling that they belonged to the Jewish people, although they did not have this feeling a few years before,” Mr. Ben writes. “They admitted, though not very willingly, that there were external reasons for an increasing consciousness of their Jewishness; but the most they would say about this was that most people in Russia still have some anti-Jewish feeling.”

Emphasizing that “one may expect that the position of the Jews in Russia will get increasingly more difficult,” Mr. Ben believes that it is not true, however, that European Jewry in the USSR is facing the danger of physical extermination through mass deportation or any other means. “Even should the present regime be willing to return to Stalin’s master plan in order to find a “final solution” for the Jewish problem, this could hardly be done without returning to the most sinister practices of the Stalin era. There are no indications that the present regime either wants or is able to do this,” he reports.