Two American Jewish organizations have expressed “shock and outrage” over an article in the Soviet Communist Party daily, Pravda, which claimed that Zionism and Nazism grew from the same roots.
The article, published January 17, likened the present Israeli leadership and its methods to Hitler and the Nazis and reiterated a familiar charge in Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda that Zionist leaders actually collaborated with the Nazis.
Howard Friedman, national president of the American Jewish Committee, called the Pravda piece a “savage and immoral attack … on the Jewish people, Judaism and the State of Israel.”
He cabled U.S. Ambassador Max Kampelman who accompanied Secretary of State George Shultz to the East-West Conference on Security in Europe, held in Stockholm last week, to discuss the Pravda article with Shultz and other appropriate persons and to urge the U.S. government to repudiate the charges contained in it.
Lynn Singer, president of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, warned that the Pravda article is “of urgent concern due to its official nature and serving as official policy to re-enforce and strengthen the traditional anti-Semitism found in the Soviet Union… Pravda’s official attack is an assalt on the entire Jewish community foreboding increasingly dangerous times for Jews living in the Soviet Union.”
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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.
