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Americans of All Faiths Urged to Act Against Soviet Anti-semitism

February 20, 1953
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A call to Americans of all religious faiths for “united action to supplement united protest” in resisting “the increasingly inhuman acts occurring in Soviet-dominated countries” was voiced by the National Conference of Christians and Jews in a statement issued today.

Scoring the recent trials in Prague and the charges made against the Moscow physicians as “anti-Semitic,” the statement declares that these actions have a significance “beyond the malicious scape-goating of the Jew.” They are related, it notes, to the earlier persecution of Catholic prelates and Protestant religious leaders, demonstrating again that “whenever one group of mankind suffers persecution because of religion, color or culture, no other group is assured of immunity.”

Suggesting that this nation may gain a lesson from the attacks on different groups abroad, the statement cautions Americans against the illusion that bigotry and hatred are peculiar only to foreign places. “The first line of action is our own neighborhood. We must marshall the forces of resistance in every American com-munity, enlisting all our institutions and organizations for the purpose, ” it says.

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