Soviet Antisemitism: More Outrages on Jewish Factory Workers: Moscow Factory Meetings Being Held to

There is a real epidemic of antisemitic outbreaks in factories throughout the Soviet Union, the Ozet (Jewish Settlement Society) states, following a survey that it has just completed of the situation in the factories. Not only ignorant workmen, but even Communists take part in these humiliations of Jewish workmen, it reports. The factory authorities and committees are frequently aware of what is transpiring, but pretend ignorance. Jews now form 20 per cent. of all the workers employed in heavy industry, but Jewish boys are being maltreated. They are not given opportunities to learn their trade. They live in filthy surroundings and are subjected to hunger and cold.

In Cheliabinsk, in the presence of the Secretary of the Communist Committee of the factory, a young girl member of the Young Communist League, named Smolina, called a young Jewish workman named Kravtsov vile names reflecting on his race, and the Communist Secretary of the Committee, Medvedev, kept silent. A Communist named Balandin similarly insulted another Jewish workman named Aleksinsky, and no one took the slightest heed. Even after the Cheliabinsk local paper had called attention in print to this state of affairs, nothing was done to check the antisemitic manifestations. Encouraged by the lack of interest of the authorities, the Ozet statement says, a number of drunken workmen in Cheliabinsk entered one night the dormitory where the Jewish workmen lived, and shouting “Hit the Jews” seized hammers and proceeded to attack every Jew they could lay their hands on. Three Jews named Kravtsov, Steklov and Sverdlina were severely hurt.

Finally the matter came to the attention of the authorities, and the Communist Party has sent a special investigating committee to Cheliabinsk.

The Moscow factories are holding indignation meetings to protest against a terrorist act committed against a Jewish workman named Stoliaroff at the Electro Zavod, one of the largest factories in Moscow, demanding that the most severe punishment should be meted out to the hooligans.

Staliaroff, who is a member of the fire brigade at the Electre Zavod, addressed a general meeting of the workers employed there, and in the course of his speech, complained of the lack of discipline among them. Tow of the workers, Polushin and Netchayev, got up and delivered speeches savagely attacking Stoliaroff. At the end of the meeting Stoliaroff went into the garage, where he was set upon and was twice hit on the head with an axe. The police investigations have shown that Polushin was one of those who attacked Stoliaroff, and he has been arrested. The date of the trial will be announced in a few days.