A new assault on Zionism by a Soviet “expert” has set off a recent wave of vociferous anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist attacks in the Soviet press and news media, it was reported by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry. The basis for this was the recent publication of a book, “Wild Wormwood,” which equates Zionism with Nazism. The book, written by T.S. Solodar, was widely reviewed within the Soviet Union this summer and was hailed for exposing the “true cornerstone of Zionist ideology and propaganda.”
The book contains long string of rabid accusations and primitive distortions that were circulated loudly and approvingly by the Soviet news media. The large and varied number of media services that reviewed and lauded the book caused apprehension among Western observers here, the Conference reported. It expressed fears that the wide publicity accorded the book may signal the beginning of an intensified campaign against all Soviet Jews whether they desire to emigrate or to remain part of Soviet society.
NEW HEIGHTS OF ABOMINATION
The anti-Semitic image of the money-grubbing, power-hungry Jew, so widely circulated in Hitler’s Germany has been raised to new heights of heinousness in “Wild Wormwood,” said Margy-Ruth Davis, executive director of the Conference.
Solodar claims to reveal the true similarity between Zionism and Nazism, pointing to alleged facts of Zionist and Nazi collaboration, and Zionist genocide activities. These fabrications found wholehearted support in the reviewer for the Moscow weekly, “Ogonek,” who saw a “deep spiritual kinship between the Conference reported. A reviewer for “Vecherniya Moskva, “said the “ideological concepts of the Zionists resemble the racist theories of the German Nazi like two drops of water.”
Another reviewer, the Conference reported, warned Soviet citizens that Zionists lure Jews to Israel because “Israel needs cannon fodder. Soviet citizens who have renounced their homeland are weeping…. and pleading to be returned, and are ready to atone at any price for their renunciation of Soviet citizenship.”
Bronx Borough President Robert Abrams, Conference chairman, observed that the outrageousness of this untruth is revealed by the fact that of the 130,000 Jews who have emigrated to date, only 200 have applied to return. The Soviet authorities are plainly trying to use campaigns of this sort to stem the tide of Jews demanding their right to emigrate, Abrams said.
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.
