Yale Prof. Resigns After Being Identified As Ex Pro-nazi Writer

The Yale Daily News disclosed yesterday that a professor resigned last summer after his exposure as the author of scurrilous anti-Semitic editorials for a Nazi-sponsored newspaper in a German-occupied region of the Soviet Union during World War II. Vladimir Sokolov-Samarin, 63, who admitted his Nazi writings, professes to be an ardent Zionist now because he believes that Jews and anti-Communists share the same goal, “to liquidate the Soviet system.”

His resignation was forced by pressure from colleagues rather than any official action by the university authorities, according to Samarin, the Yale Daily News reported. He was identified by the Moscow Yiddish periodical, Sovietish Heimland, last April as the writer of anti-Semitic editorials in 1943 for Rech, a pro-Nazi newspaper in the occupied city of Orel. His writings included statements likening Jews to “a large yellow rat with a protruding mug” and advocacy of violence against “kikes.”

Samarin, who taught at Yale for 17 years, claimed that he wrote against the Jews on orders from the German censor and because he thought he was fighting Bolshevism. He said he had no knowledge of the Nazi extermination camps. He claimed his exposure in Sovietish Heimland was a KGB effort to discredit him because of his anti-Communist activities.

‘GOEBBELS-LIKE’ WRITINGS

Robert Jackson, chairman of the Slavic languages and literature department was quoted as describing Samarin’s writings as “Goebbels-like” but he took no action when they were brought to his attention last May. According to the Yale Daily News, four of six professors in the department wrote to Samarin that his writing “reveals to us beyond any reasonable doubt that you were engaged not only in anti-Communist but also pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic activities under the German occupation.”

One of the signers of the letter, Prof. Edward Stankiewicz, acknowledged that it had been written with the intention of persuading Samarin to resign because “we don’t feel the department should be attacked for harboring an ex-Fascist and an anti-Semite.” Samarin, reportedly in poor health, said he intended to resign within two years but bowed to pressure and submitted his resignation last summer, the Yale Daily News reported. But he will draw his pay from Yale through July, 1977 and will receive a pension from the national teachers organization.