Anatoly F. Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador to the U.S., was asked to convey to his government the “shock” of a national Jewish labor fraternal order that “the Soviet Union is officially condoning the dissemination of a film designed to incite anti-Jewish feelings” among Soviet citizens.
The national executive board of The Workmen’s Circle, meeting here this weekend, sent a message to Dobrynin asking for the withdrawal of “Secret and Other Things,” a film purporting to trace the beginning of Soviet history, its personalities and events since its founding. In it, according to reports from Moscow, a would-be assassin of Lenin, Dora Kaplan, is called a “Jewess,” Hitler’s tanks invading the Soviet Union are shown with a narrator proclaiming that the Nazis were fueled with “Jewish capital” and Leon Trotsky is pointedly referred to by his original name, “Bronstein.”
The message to Dobrynin was signed by Bernard Backer, president of the Workmen’s Circle, and alludes to the film as containing “ingredients of the infamous ‘Protocols of Zion.’ “The Circle’s national executive board told the Soviet Ambassador that “we urge its (the film) withdrawal and demand an apology to your people for subjecting them to this Hitleresque version of your history.”
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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.
