Soviet Press Charged with Disseminating News Provoking Anti-semitism

Soviet newspapers reaching here with the report that four Jews in Vilna have been sentenced this week to death and four others to prison terms ranging from four to 10 years for alleged “currency speculation” reveal a subtle appeal to anti-Semitic feelings, according to and analysis in the New York Herald-Tribune today.

The analysis described the treatment of Jews in the Soviet press involving alleged economic offenses as “unprecedented.” Declaring that the Soviet press seldom reports on criminal or Judicial proceedings, the analysis asserted that in the last three months major regional and national journals had described “in lurid detail” the convictions and death sentences of 12 Russian Jews “for self-serving economic activities.” During 1961, 38 other Russian Jews received long prison sentences in such cases.

The analysis said that the geographic pattern of the press reports “and the careful labeling of Jewish principals make it patently clear that Jews are being used as major characters in a Soviet morality play.” It emphasized that in every press account, the defendants were indirectly identified as Jews and then pictured as “unscrupulous economic bandits who exploited honest. Soviet citizens.” Whenever “the villain of the piece” did not have an easily identifiable Jewish surname, “the first and middle names were provided in place of the more commonly noted initials.”

The report said that when non-Jewish Russians figure prominently in the beginning of such press accounts, they gradually recede into the background “until they finally are depicted as the victims of superior cunning.” Generally, according to the analysis, it is the Jewish defendant who is sentenced to death, or given a long prison sentence, while “other members” of the “criminal clique” are reported as receiving prison terms of unspecified length.