Fifteen Jews are now on trial in the city of Chernovitz–a city in Bukovina annexed to Soviet Ukraine after World War II– charged with speculating in gold and foreign currency, according to a report received here today from Moscow.
The report quoins the Soviet Ukrainian newspaper Pravda Ukrainy as stating that the trial started several lays ago. The paper listed all the names of the accused and emphasized that many Jews in Chernovitz have relatives abroad. About 30 percent of the 150,000 residents of the city are Jews.
The newspaper asserted that 55 pounds of gold ingots, diamonds, and foreign currency was found in possession of members of “the ring.” It revealed that among the accused was an 81-year-old man, Alter Bronstein, who was accused in currency dealings amounting to more than $100, 000. At the same time it described the aged Jew as “an apparent beggar and scavenger.”
Yefim Margoshes, described by the Soviet newspaper as a railroad inspector, was charged at the trial with having had contacts with speculators in Moscow, Lvov, Kiev, and Brest, all cities with sizeable Jewish populations. The newspaper charged that Margoshes was engaged in 170, 000 rubles worth of buying and selling in a short time and added he was holding seven savings bankbooks when he was arrested.
Another defendant, Moishe Meyer Zayats, described as “a round-shouldered lank man in an old-fashioned blue suit, ” was charged with having “speculated in everything, from women’s stockings to gold” and with having transacted operations totaling 130,000 rubles in the last three years.
Other defendants listed by the newspaper were Hersh Shternberg, Srul limilevich, Esther Weinbern, Isaak Ronis, Enzel Koifman, Samuil Levantal, Mendel Flomenboim, Felika Mester, Hersh Nagel, Leonid Sherman and Yankel Kohen. The trial is the latest in a series in which names of Jews have been prominently highlighted in Soviet press reports of arrests, trials and executions.
(From Paris, it was reported today that observers there considered the Ukraine trial another in the series staged by Soviet authorities to draw public attention away from internal economic difficulties. It was also reported in Paris that the new trial had affected progressive non-Jewish circles in France who had believed that the reign of terror had abated in recent weeks.)
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