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Soviet Editors, Fighting Anti-semitism, Receive Threatening Letters

May 27, 1929
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The editors of a number of Soviet newspapers which are carrying on an energetic campaign against anti-Semitism in the Ukaine, are receiving anonymous warnings that in the event they do not discontinue their fight, they will be the victims of violence.

The Moscow press reports that letters of such content have been received by Ukrainian editors in Krementchug. Suny and other towns. The letters bear the signature of “Threatening Hand,” and contain the following phrase: “The renegades will be killed, as will be the Jews to whom they have sold their minds and souls.”

Maxim Adalov, the head of the criminal police, in Chosovirtovsk, near Dagistan, was sentenced to one year imprisonment for spreading rumors during last Passover that “the Jews use blood for Passover.” The rumor was started when a local resident, Aliev, missed his four-year-old daughter and came to the police, declaring his belief that the Jews had stolen his child. The police head, Adalov, instead of squelching the rumor, encouraged its spread by sending out a police detachment to the Jewish district of the city and ordering a search of all Jewish houses. In the evening the child was found, walking in the fields of a suburb.

Aliev, who was likewise tried by the court, was acquitted, since, the court held, that being ignorant, he may have acted with sincere belief. The head of the police could not be so regarded and his action could not be overlooked.

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