A rabidly anti-Semitic successor movement to the notorious “Black Hundreds,” the pogrom organization of Czarist Russia, is coming to the fore in Russian emigre circles in West Germany by conducting Jew-baiting propaganda in four languages.
The movement, which makes its headquarters in Munich, is known by its Russian-language initials, RONDD (Rossiiskaya Organisatsiya Narodno Dershavnovo Dvisheniya). It seeks the restoration of a centralized Russian Empire and to that end formed a “Council for Re-establishment of the Russian State.” Both RONDD and the Council are headed by one Eugene Dershavin, a former ballet impressario from Eastern Poland who volunteered for the Nazi armed forces during the war and apparently served with the SS in the Soviet Union. His real name is Arciuk.
The RONDD maintains excellent connections with fascist organizations throughout the world, but is not endorsed by the old-line White Russian monarchists. It publishes Russian, German, English and French versions of its monthly bulletin, called “Nabat,” or “The Alarm,” which features vicious attacks upon Jews, freemasons and President Eisenhower.
Communism, explains editor Kudinov, is an instrument invented to realize the age-old Jewish dream of world domination. The Communist leaders have been staging sham trials of Jewish defendants because they must conceal the identity of international Jewry and Communism. Dershavin, for his part, argues that a certain section of the Jewish people, the “Satanists,” knowingly and deliberately incited anti-Semitism and pogroms. Citing a quotation from the Apocalypse about the “synagogue of Satan,” he calls upon his followers to wage “a merciless battle against the dark international forces of Satanism” and predicts that much Jewish blood will yet be shed.
Last year a criminal complaint against Kudinov and Dershavin was filed on behalf of a Jewish woman who felt libelled by the defamatory articles. The Munich District Attorney did start proceedings, but eventually ruled that group libel is not punishable under German law. In consequence, the temporary confiscation of RONDD literature has been lifted, and the Jew-baiting literature is again being circulated freely here. The English-language bulletins are marked with a sales price of “five cents per copy,” which would seem to indicate that they are being exported to the United States.
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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.
