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Violent Campaign Against Jews Started by Communists in Germany

January 6, 1953
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The violent campaign opened yesterday by the Central Committee of East Germany’s Communist Party against “capitalist Jewry” and “agents of Zionism” was likened here today to the virulent Nazi propaganda against Jews.

The belief was expressed here today that the anti-Jewish campaign, which found its expression in a resolution made public yesterday in Berlin by the East German Communist Party, is intended to impress former Nazis who are still strongly anti-Jewish. The resolution accused Paul Merker, a pre-war member of the German Communist Politbureau, of praising the Jewish Agency in 1944 and of subsequently “trying to find a way for Zionist agents to enter Germany as spies and diversionists.”

Merker, who was the leader of the German Communists in Mexico during World War II, is also accused in the resolution of urging the return of all Nazi-confiscated Jewish property to its former Jewish owners. Other German Communists are charged with having associated with Merker in “glorifying” Zionism. The resolution emphasizes that Zionism is “ruled in Palestine by American imperialism.”

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