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THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
Published weekly by Southern Newepeper BaterpHsee, SN CenrtUad
it, N. 1., Atlanta, Goonria WO, TR MHI, X* MMi Swod da*
postage paid at Atlanta, Georgia. Yearly eabwripUoa, fjM. The
Southern Israelite invitee literary eoatribattena and correspondence
bat Is not to be considered aa sharing the rtews expressed by writers.
DEADLINE Is 5 ’ M. FRIDAY, but material received earlier will
iuv« a much better chance of publication.
Adolph Rosenberg, Editor end Publisher
Kathleen Nease, Vida Goldgar, Edward M. Kahn
Kathy Wood, Betty Mayer, Gertrude Burnham
MEMBER
Georgia Press Assn.
Il^lf Seven Arts Features
MewIpjfKper
•woofstfos - Fossdad >•* World Union Press
Public Opinion and Conscience
In these times of confusion and uncertainty it is diffi
cult to differentiate between propaganda and fact. What
are the facts in any situation very often depends dn the
vantage point from which you view the event.
There are those who deny the existence or the reality
of public opinion and a public conscience. And yet in the
circumstances of an emergency or a crisis we are in honor
bound to create a public opinion and to arouse a public
conscience that will prevent evil men from executing their
diabolical schemes and plans.
All through history the Jews have served as a conveni
ent scape goat. The/ methods have changed. The rhetoric is
not the same. The words are not the same. Instead of
anti-semitism it parades now as anti-zionism. Instead of
launching an attack on the international Jew it is now an
attack on the Zionist as a creature of imperialism.
The end result is always the same—the destruction of
the Jew.
Currently the world has passed through an episode of
the Russian version of attack on the Jewish people. We
refer to the Trial of Eleven, of whom nine were Jews, for
hijacking a plane, in an attempt to bring freedom to those
who wanted to emigrate to Israel. The charge of course
was never committed but an Soviet jurisprudence, this is an
inconsequential factor. All were convicted. Two were sen
tenced to death. n
The world was shocked. People in every free country
mobilized public opinion against the sentence. People of all
faiths, and all political and social ideologies joined in pro
test. In this country the American Conference for Soviet
Jewry sprung into action and led a solid front of support
in behalf of Soviet Jewry against the manifestation of the
peculiar virus of Russian aSS-seiHTtUiTH:——
According to the constitution and laws of Soviet Russia
anti-Semitisrrf is outlawed. It is practiced, however, as anti-
Zionist imperialism.
In Czarist Prussia the world witnessed pogroms against
Jews. During the Stalin Era we witnessed pogroms and the
faked trials against Jewish doctors. All this is a continuation
of age old anti-semitism in different garb.
The reality of the pressure of world opinion was mani
fested when on appeal the death sentence of the two Jews
was commuted to fifteen years imprisonment.
Public opinion and an appeal to public consience can
make a difference. American Jewry must continue to be
in the front ranks of the mobilization of all people on behalf
of Soviet Jewry.
—EDWARD M. KAHN
This Week in History
40 YEARS AGO: 1931
Austria banned “All Quiet on the Western Front, the anti-war
film produced and directed by Jews, after a week of Fascist rioting.
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BORIS SMOLAR (Editor-In-Chief Emeritus, JTA)
BETWEEN YOU AND ME
KHRUSCHEV’S CONFESSIONS
Is there anti-Semitism today in the Soviet
Union? . . , Does Soviet government now dis
courage anti-Jewish feelings in the country; does
she act against anti-Semitism?
Nikita Khruschev, the deposed Soviet Premier,
anwers startlingly these—and other pertinent
questions concerning Jews in the USSR—in his
book “Khruschev Remembers” published recently
by Little, Brown and Company. He also gives an
insight into the Kremlin’s policy with regard to
Israel.
Khruschev’s book is one of half-truths. He
tells all about Stalin’s brutal anti-Semitism, but
not the full truth about himself. He attempts
to pose as a friend of Soviet Jewry, but con
veniently forgets a few things. He avoids men
tioning the role he personally played in encour
aging the nationalistic feelings of the Ukrainians,
against Jews when he was “the “big boss” in the
Ukraine as head of the Communist Party there.
He ignores the fact that it was he who did not
permit the erection of a monument at Babi Yar
for the tens of thousands of Kiev Jews who were
mowed down in the ravine there by the Nazis
when they entered Kiev; and that even later,
when he was the ruler in the Kremlin, he still
maintained this policy of not permitting the
putting up of monuments on mass graves of Jew
ish victims of the Nazi occupation forces.
Khruschev also avoids mentioning the anti-
Jewish sentiments he expressed when asked about
discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union
by- foreign statesmen and even by Communist
Party delegations from Canada and France who
wanted to know the truth about the treatment
of Soviet Jewry. He does not relate that during
his visit to Poland as Premier of the Soviet Union,
he bluntly told the head of the Polish govern
ment, Wladyslaw Gomulka, that “there are too
many Abramoviches” holding posts in the Polish
government system.
However, the deposed Soviet Premier deals at
great length with Stalin’s anti-Semitic feelings
and actions. He reveals many facts showing
Stalin’s hatred of Jews. He emphasizes that while
Stalin was careful not to appear in his writings
or public expressions as an anti-Semite he un
reservedly displayed his dislike for the Jews
when talking in the Kremlin to the men around
him.
From a Jewish point of view, the most con
fessing statement by Khruschev in his book is
where he writes: “After Stalin came to power,
instead of setting an example of how to liquidate
anti-Semitism at its roots, he helped spread it.
Anti-Semitism grew like a growth inside Stalin’s
own brains. After Stalin’s death, we arrested the
spread a hiL-but only arrested it. Unfortunately,
the germs of anti-Semitism remained in our sys
tem, and apparently there still isn’t the necessary
discouragement of it and resistance to it.”
What can the present rulers in the Kremlin
answer to this accusing finger pointed at them
by their own man who preceded them as ruler
of Russia and who knows the Soviet policy
best?
* * *
ANTI-JEWISH REVELATIONS
Khruschev’s book includes a full chapter on
Stalin’s anti-Semitism with many details never
known before. He relates that the venerated Jew
ish actor Mikhoels, who was the head of the
Jewish anti-Fascist Committee, was not killed
when he fell in front of a truck—as reported'—
but was actually thrown out of the truck at
Stalin’s instructions. Mikhoels, he claims, had
been killed secretly “like a beast” and his mur
derers were rewarded.
Khruschev also reveals that when he became
the head of the government, after Stalin’s death,
he extracted from the archives of the Soviet Min
istry of State Security information that the So
viet secret political police had also planned to
murder Maxim Litvinov, Soviet Foreign Minister
for many years and eliminated from this post by
Stalin shortly before the Stalin-Hitler pact of
1939, because he was a Jew. Litvinov was, ac
cording to discovered documents, to have been
ambused and killed on the road While he was
traveling from Moscow to his summer place on
the outskirts of the city. For some reason the
assassination was not carried out and Litvinov
died later from natural causes.
Khruschev also relates how Stalin ordered him
to organize a pogrom oh Jewish workers in an
aviation factory in Moscow by the non-Jewish
workers of that factory at the end of the working
day when trouble had develqped in that factory.
The order was given to him by Stalin in the
presence of Molotov, Beria and Malenkov,
khruschev says he did not carry out the order,
not only because he considered it a disgrace, but
also because he was afraid that it might later
boomerang against him.
“Even though Stalin had given me a direct
*> order,” Khruschev writes, “I knew that if some
thing like what he suggested were done, and if
it were to become public knowledge, a commis
sion would no doubt be appointed and the culprits
would be severely punished. Stalin would have
stopped at nothing to punish anti-Semitism pub
licly. Orders or no orders, he would have
strangled anyone whose actions would have dis
credited his name, especially with something as
indefensible and shameful as anti-Semitism.
Khruschev describes how Stalin had, in his
presence, indicated his anti-Jewish feelings to
two top Soviet leaders in the Ukraine who were
themselves far from being friendly to Jews, thus
encouraging them to start intensified anti-Jewish
propaganda in the Ukraine. When Stalin spoke
to Kremlin leaders about Jews, Khruschev re
lates, he often imitated the exaggerated accent
the way Jews talk, in the same way people who
despise Jews talk when they mock the negative
Jewish traits.
• * *
LOVE FOR NASSER
Of great interest is the part of Khruschev’s
book in which he tells of Stalin’s order to liqui
date the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, which
culminated in the mass-arrest and the mass-killing
of several hundred Jewish writers and intellec
tuals who were active in this committee.
The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee had been
formed when the Nazis declared war against the
Soviet Union. Its aim was to strengthen Jewish
sympathy the world over — especially in the
United States — toward Russia in fighting the
Nazis as a common enemy. The Soviet govern
ment, including Khruschev, considered the work
°f the Jewish Anti-Fafecist Committee “indispen
sable to the interests of the Soviet Union,
Khruschev says.
After the defeat of the German armies at
Stalingrad, and their retreat from the Ukraine,
members of the Committee addressed a memoran
dum to Stalin suggesting that the Crimea be made
a Jewish Soviet Republic within the Soviet Union.
The entire Tartar population was at that time de
ported from the Crimea because of collaboration
with the Nazis during the occupation. Stalin, ac-
cording khruschev, saw behind this proposal
the hand of American Zionists.” He declared that
the Committee members were trying “to set up a
Jewish state in Crimea in order to wrest the
Crimea away from the Soviet Union and to estab
lish an outpost of American imperialism on ouf
• °Tu S ' The result was that all who were involved
in the activities of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Com
mittee—including high standing members of the
Communist Party—were either executed or de
ported to camps in remote parts of Siberia. Inclu
ded among the latter was also Molotov’s wife, who
was Jewish.
All these facts, are for the first time related in
detail by Khruschev. He also goes into great
length about the notorious “Doctors’ Plot,” the
trial of which was planned by Stalin as an excuse
for mass-deportations of Jews from the European
part of the Soviet Union to Siberia. Fortunately,
the trial never took place because of Stalin’s
sudden death. The accused physicians were freed
and exonerated.
10 YEARS AGO: 1961
The Moscow newspaper Trad rejected charges of Soviet anti-
Semitism as “quite absurd.”
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Khruschev devotes also a chapter to the Arab-
Israel conflict. He shows a lot of ignorance but
displays great love for Nasser and the Egyptians.
He feels quite uncomfortable with the fact that
in the Six-Day War, Egypt was so badly defeated
by the “Israeli aggressors,” but claims that his
policy with regard to Egypt, when he was Premier
of the Soviet Union, “has already borne fruit for
the Soviet people.”
Copyright 1970, JTA
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