Anti-Semitism in the countries behind the Iron Curtain, including the Soviet Union, continues to exist just as it did, prior to Stalin’s death, except that it is now better concealed from the world, says a report issued here today by the House of Representatives Select Committee on Communist Aggression.
The report, which deals with the “treatment of Jews under Communism,” states that the accumulated facts “give a clear answer to those who succumbed to wishful thinking and pro-Soviet propaganda, and believed that the persecution of Jews would end after Stalin’s death. The persecution of the Jewish minority continues, even if it is less widely advertised and better concealed than in the period just before the dictator’s death. On the “Jewish front, as in all other respects, the aims of the leaders of world Communism remain unchanged and are pursued as always with methods which combine force with deceit, aggression with deception.”
The report emphasizes that “the Communist attitude toward the Jews was not substantially revised after Stalin’s death. Only its forms were modified: anti-Semitic drives are now less publicized and better concealed from the free world. But Jewish communal life remains suppressed, the belief in a world-wide Jewish conspiracy continues to be an article of Communist faith; and the persecutions are proceeding as before. In dozens of traits, now conducted secretly, hundreds of Jews, former communal leaders as well as Communists of Jewish parentage, are being tried on the same fake charges of ‘Zionist plots.'”
The report says that “the Jewish minority is a special target of Communist persecution because it is suspected of attachment to the religious tenets of Judaism and to the humanitarian values of Jewish culture and history, as well as of ties of cultural and emotional solidarity reaching behind the borders of the Soviet Empire.”
CITES ANTI-JEWISH ACTS; ANALYZES REASONS FOR MOSCOW’S ACTIONS
Emphasizing the contention that there was little change in the status of Soviet Jewry since Stalin’s death, the report declares: “Except for the 13 released Moscow doctors, no victims of the anti-Jewish measures were publicly rehabilitated; Zionism remained a criminal offense, hundreds of former Zionist leaders in satellite countries languished in jail; Jewish communal activities were proscribed as before; emigration remained for bidden; the charges leveled against Jewish leaders all over the world in the Slansky trial were not only not retracted, but were repeated again and again; the existence of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy against the Communist regimes remained an article of faith for all Communists.”
Reasons for the Soviet actions are attributed by the committee to “Moscow’s hope of extending its influence in the Middle East” being “thoroughly disappointed with the emergence of the young Jewish State as a democratic country of the Western type, with a very insignificant pro-Soviet minority.”
The report says Israelis who came from Communist lands were one of the strongest anti-Communist influences in Israel’s life. It notes that “the ardent response of Jews from the USSR and satellites to the establishment of Israel, which promised them a possible refuge from their misery, awakened Communist fears of Jewish ‘unreliability.'”
The main reason “for this offensive against the Jews,” the committee reports, “was the sharpening of the cold war.” This caused the Jews to be characterized as a “suspect” minority, connected with “foreign western influences,” not only political but also religious, cultural, artistic, and scientific.”
A preface to the report notes that the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities “has always been a good index to the character of a political and social system.” The report says the Cominform has reduced religious freedom to the right to hold services under strict government supervision and transformed the remaining “religious” organizations into instruments of Communist policy. “They have introduced a degree of discrimination which, in the case of Jews, approaches complete elimination of Jewish citizens from public life, and they have made violent anti-Semitism an instrument of government policy,” the report states.
The report was issued after a study lasting several months. Public hearings were conducted by the committee in New York in September. Among those who testified were spokesmen for major Jewish organizations and such eyewitnesses as Jewish refugees and former community leaders from areas now governed by the Communists. Additional evidence was accumulated in other hearings, conducted in Europe as well as America, in regard to conditions of Jews in Eastern Europe.
Today’s report traced the situation of Russian Jewry from the 1917 revolution until the present. It summarized the impact of Communism on Jewish institutions, religion and culture; the Birobidjan experiment was described, as well as the Stalin-Hitler pact and the extension of Soviet rule to the satellite states.
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.
