Senate Investigators Examine Anti-semitic Campaign Literature

A special investigator of the U.S. Senate Committee on Elections is now studying here anti-Jewish literature which is entering Massachusetts state by mail in large quantities. The anti-Semitic propaganda material is tied up with the presidential election campaign. A similar investigation is also being conducted in New Hampshire.

The Jewish Community Council here and the Anti-Defamation League said that the recognizable sources of the anti-Semitic propaganda include such persons as Robert H. Williams of California, Gerald L.K. Smith, Gerald Winrod and Joseph Kamp. One rather ungrammatical effort, an anonymous one, came with a Philadelphia postmark. Still another, a four-page mimeographed product which repeated the bigoted mouthings of the previously established native right wingers, bore the imprint of one Richard Hamel of Denver, Colorado. When “Hamel” formerly lived in Winthrop he was known hereabouts as Richard Levine. He went to Denver last November.

In all, about a dozen separate types of printed or mimeographed mailings came in the mails to Bostonians. Since easily-secured mailing lists of business and professional men, veterans’ groups and others were used indiscriminately by the senders, a number of the pieces fell into the hands of Jewish persons. Veteran observers said this week that the influx is the heaviest in recent years, surpassing those of the 1944 and 1948 campaigns.

In New York, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith today reported that Gerald B. Winrod, of Wichita, Kansas, who runs the Defenders of the Christian Faith, is flooding the mails with anti-Semitic material tied to the current election campaign. Circulating in leading cities since late March is a pamphlet by Winrod, “The Philip Dru Conspiracy Exposed” which rehashes canards that were exploited in the past by Goebbels and Father Coughlin, the A.D.L. said.