Chaim Nachman Bialik, the foremost Hebrew poet of the day, has issued an appeal against the arrests of Jews in Russia in connection with a campaign by the authorities to extort foreign currency and gold coinage from them. He claims that he recently received new material from Russia proving that tens of thousands, mostly Jews, had been again arrested. He calls on the Jewish press to join in a protest against the arrests.
Bialik declares that thirty Jews were kept in a pit under the open winter sky for three days at Korosten, near Kiev, without food, in connection with a drive to induce them to give up currency and coinage.
According to an appeal which has reached Bialik from Kiev, eighty per cent of the people arrested are now verging on death; in Chabne, Wolf Slutzky died from the tortures to which he had been subjected in connection with the currency inquisition.
A similar appeal from Moscow urging large scale protests today reached Bialik who submitted the above documents to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, under his own signature, affirming their reliability.
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