Soviet diplomats and Communist propagandists in this country are making extensive use of material provided by the American Council for Judaism in their attempts to quiet mounting concern among Jews and non-Jews here over the systematic discrimination practiced against the Jews in the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Embassy in Washington replies to written inquiries on the treatment of Russian Jews by including statements by Leonard R. Sussman, executive director of the Council, as “proof” that anti-Jewish discrimination does not exist in the Soviet Union. Communist publications, currently devoting much attention to denials of mistreatment of the Jewish minority in the Soviet Union, also place considerable reliance on the “evidence” in statements by the Council for Judaism.
Officials of the organization have apparently taken on themselves the duty of replying to criticisms of the Soviet Union’s Jewish policy wherever such criticism may appear in newspapers throughout the United States. They frequently prevail upon local members of the organization to write to the newspapers, as individuals, denying mistreatment of the Jews in Russia. The Council for Judaism “line” is to identify such charges as “Zionist propaganda.”
The onus of dealing with most protests received by the Soviet Embassy on the Jewish question falls on Gennadi V. Gavrikov, the Embassy’s Second Secretary. Mr. Gavrikov generally replies by quoting statistics on the Jewish population in Russia, official statements on the status of the Jewish community, and the “evidence” of the Council for Judaism. A typical letter from Mr. Gavrikov concluded as follows:
“And here is further evidence coming from Mr. Leonard R. Sussman, executive director of the American Council for Judaism. This is what he had to say concerning the question in his address before the annual conference of the Council in Chicago, III., on May 11, 1962:
“We have talked with Soviet experts in the government and out; they see no substantiation of the broad charge of persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union… The State Department told us, as it told others, there is no government-inspired anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union at this time. Recent trials of Jews, the Department told us, were ‘ostensibly not for religious activity but for alleged involvement in speculations or other criminal offenses.’ I hardly need to add anything more on this subject.”
IGNORES STATE DEPARTMENT REPORT ON SOVIET ANTI-JEWISH ACTS
There is no public record of any statement by the American Council for Judaism modifying its position in the light of the declaration by the State Department in March that the United States Government’s concern over anti-Semitic developments in Russia had been made known “at the highest levels of the Soviet Government.” The Department disclosed then it had received information “officially and from private observers” that anti-Semitism existed “in many areas of the Soviet Union.”
The State Department noted that pressures on the Jews were such that “Jewish religious activities have been curtailed to the point where functioning synagogues are a rarity and opportunities to train and educate Jewish religious leaders have been virtually eliminated.” The State Department also charged that Jews in the Soviet Union “are receiving a disproportionate amount of condemnation and victimization” in the Soviet campaign against economic crimes. It warned that “the publicity given the trials will in all probability have the effect of buttressing already existing anti-Semitic prejudices through the association of identifiably Jewish persons with economic violations.”
COUNCIL’S STATEMENTS SEEN LENDING AID TO COMMUNIST PROPAGANDISTS
The statements by the American Council for Judaism have been most helpful to Communist propagandists seeking to combat the impression made here by Soviet anti-Semitism. The March issue of “New World Review,” formerly “Soviet Russia Today,” relies heavily on a Council for Judaism memorandum and the Sussman report to the Council’s annual conference last year to disprove the charges.
The magazine is listed by the United States Subversive Activities Control Board. Its editor, Jessica Smith, the author of the article on Russian Jews in the March issue, is described as “a long-time member and functionary in the (Communist) Party, as well as in the party-controlled Friends of the Soviet Union.”
Mr. Sussman’s report on what he said the State Department told him about the position of the Jews in Russia is a highlight of Mr. Smith’s defense of the Soviet Union. The author went further than the Embassy aide and quoted Mr. Sussman as asserting that “Russian Jews, on the whole, are among the privileged classes of the population.” Mr. Sussman pointed out, according to the magazine, that “of course, it is convenient to use Jews to whip the Soviet, just as it is convenient to use the cold war to produce mass manpower for Israel.”
The Communist publication also quoted extensively from a memorandum it said the Council for Judaism had issued on Dec. 11, 1961, which denied that Jews suffered any greater religious disabilities in Russia than other religions and justified the execution of Jews in the Leningrad and Moscow spy trials. “New World Review” quoted this memorandum as stating that “there is no evidence that any large number of Jews… desire greater religious participation, after several generations of downgrading of religion.”
JUSTIFIES SPY TRIALS IN RUSSIA; SEEKS TO INVOLVE ISRAEL
In justification of the spy trials, the magazine quoted the Council memorandum as follows: “It is generally acknowledged that Israel has one of the most effective espionage services…We note the Israel-Zionist effort to interfere in the internal affairs of countries wherever there are large Jewish populations. We recognize this to be part of a single pattern which commits Zionist agencies to the policy of ‘ingathering all Jews in Israel.’ Consequently we oppose every step to carry out this policy as applied to Jews of the United States and we recognize that the same forces are often directed toward Jews in other countries.”
Typical of the letters written by members of the American Council for Judaism to editors of newspapers commenting editorially on Russian anti-Semitism is one which appeared in the Washington Post and Times-Herald earlier this year. The letter complained that American newspapers gave almost no attention to the “even severer restrictions on Soviet Islam” and asked: “Is the American press for freedom of religion in Russia only for those religious groups which have counterparts in the United States?”
The letter protested advocacy by “certain right-wing Congressmen and segments of the media” to withdrawal of the American Ambassador from Moscow because of Soviet anti-Semitism and insisted that “surely our relations with Russia can no more be governed by their Jewish policies than their Jehovah Witnesses policies or our relations with India by their caste system.”
The letter linked the Council for Judaism position on the Soviet Union with its enmity to Israel in asking: “How many of the religious leaders who protested to Russia (over discriminations against the Jewish religion) would be willing to protest to Israel over its anti-Moslem and anti-Christian policies?”
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.
