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Soviet Broadcast Incites Against Jews in the Ukraine; Blasts Israel

December 31, 1958
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An inciting anti-Jewish broadcast in the Ukrainian language, addressed to all Ukrainians in the Soviet Union, was monitored here today. The broadcast came from a station in Kirovograd (formerly Yelizavetgrad) which disseminates material over the air for editorial guidance of the Soviet press in the Ukraine.

Unlike the broadcasts over the Moscow radio, which limit themselves to attacks on Israel, the Ukrainian broadcast contained attacks on Jews in general, in addition to usual Communist charges against Israel. It went out of its way to emphasize that, although the Communist revolution abolished the anti-Jewish laws of the Czarist regime, Jewish “nationalists” not only abroad, but also in Soviet Russia and in the Ukraine, “adopted an inimical attitude toward the Soviet regime.”

This is believed to be the first direct attack on Jews in the Soviet Union carried over a Soviet radio station since the Khrushchev regime. To justify it, the broadcast referred to Lenin, alleging that he declared that “reactionary essence characterizes the growing national unity of the Jews.” Starting with the usual Soviet attacks against Zionism, the broadcast stated:

“After the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, leaders of Jewish bourgeois nationalists adopted an inimical attitude toward the Soviet regime. They concluded agreements with Denikin, a White Russian general, and Petlyura, chairman of the directorate of the Ukrainian National Government, despite the horrible Jewish pogroms committed by their gangs in the Ukraine and Byelorussia. In one of Kharkov’s “Black Hundred” papers in July, 1919, the Zionists published an appeal entitled “To All Russian Citizens of Judaic Extraction” in which they urged all Jews to join Denikin’s army.”

SAYS JEWISH “NATIONALISTS” ARE SUPPORTED BY U.S. “IMPERIALISTS”

“Throughout the Soviet regime, Jewish bourgeois nationalists have conducted inimical activities against the USSR,” the broadcast continued. “Jewish bourgeois nationalists enjoy great support from the American imperialists, for instance from Rockefeller who recently gave them several million rubles.

“The Jewish bourgeoisie has widely advertised the State of Israel as a shrine and refuge for the Jewish people, but everybody knows that this shrine has beer a tool in the hands of the imperialists. It has been used to deceive the working masses of Jews in various countries and make them subservient instruments in the imperialists’ hands. The Zionists are also indoctrinating individual Jews with a nationalist spirit, trying to enlist them in anti-Soviet activities, and forcing them to become traitors to their fatherland.”

The broadcast then went on to quote from a number of letters allegedly mailed by Jews from Israel to relatives in the Soviet Ukraine, complaining about life in Israel and about forcing children of immigrants from Poland and the Soviet Union to undergo “the savage rite of circumcision.” One of the letters quoted comes from an immigrant, Fanya Neyman, described in the broadcast as a “former inhabitant of Kirovograd.” The letter was sent by Mrs. Neyman to the Kirovograd municipality, the broadcast claimed.

“The Israeli Government has been guilty of many armed attacks against neighboring Arab countries,” the broadcast continued. “The Israeli army, incited by capitalists of the United States, Britain, and France, attacked Egypt at the end of October, 1956. As a result of this aggression, many towns and villages were destroyed, thousands of innocent people were killed and wounded, and great material losses were caused Egypt. In 1957, the Israeli Government announced its accession to the Dulles-Eisenhower doctrine, and thus handed over the country to the American militarists.

“Jewish bourgeois nationalists support aggressive Zionist plans and openly take sides with the imperialist states. The present increase in anti-people’s forces covers various sectors of life. These forces disseminate the racist theory of hatred of people and the superiority of one people over others,” the Ukrainians are told in the broadcast.

A recent copy of Pravda, received here today from Moscow, couples Israel’s alleged “aggressivity and rearmament” with the recent visit to the Middle East of United States Assistant Secretary of State William Rountree.

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