~ AN EYEWITNESS REPORT. 1n01-++sssssssssssnsnnnasssenoa
The truth about
the Jews In

Eastern

By I1VOR MONTAGU

ITHIN the last few weeks I
have travelled in Czecho-
slovakia, Hungary, Rumania and

Bulgaria, four People’s Demo- —
>

cracies.

Conditions are completely
and entirely normal so far as
their Jewish inhabitants are con-
cerned. That is — far more
secure, honorable and confident
than in the bulk of the “West-
ern” lands.

This is the short answer to
stories of “purges” and “pogroms,”
of “Jewish people panic-stricken
with insecurity,” of “ ‘PJ.’ on the
walls once more... .”

These fantastic tales of horror
are a complete fabrication, a cruel
cheat.

A callous game is being played
with the feelings of Jewish people
and others.

The monstrous pretense of a
wave of anti-Semitism in Eastern
Europe has been spread because
of the arrest and punishment of a
handful of criminals, Jewish and
non-Jewish.

It has been spread to try to ob-

The

NE of the biggest of the many

Big Lies unleashed against the
Soviet Union is that anti-Semitism
is involved in the uncovering of
the dJatest group of spies and as-
sassins. This Big Lie is particu-
larly vile; one of its main pur-
poses is to build antagonism
against the socialist countries to
further the pro-war policies of the
Eisenhower-Dulles administration.

The Soviet Union was the first
country in, the world to declare
anti-Semitism, both in word and
deed, a crimimal offense. Repre-
sentatives of the Jewish people
have won highest honors in every
sphere of Soviet life—government,
art, industry, agriculture.

We reprint below a translation
of an article on “Anti-Semitism”
from the Large Soviet Encyclo-

pedia, Volume II, 1950, pages”

512-528.

NTI-FSEMITISM: One of. the
most extreme forms of racial

chauvinism bred by the class ex-_
ploiting social order and express-.

ed in a hostile attitude toward the
Jews, in the spread of hostility to-
ward them, as well as in legal re-
strictions, expulsions and mass ex-
termination of them. In the hands
of the ruling exploiting classes
anti-Semitism serves as one of the

“means in the struggle against the ©

revolutionary movement of the
masses. aes.

Anti-Semitism became wide-
spread in the Middle Ages when
the clergy and the feudal lords
tried in all ways to set the popu-
lar masses against the Jews with
the aim of moving the masses
away from the_ revolutionary
struggle. The feudal and the mer-
cantile elements were interested
in stimulating anti-Semitism for
the purpose of their personal en-
richment, too.

A

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GERMAN
DEMOCRATIC
REPUBLIC:
pot yp vetap re

; ea

scure the discovery that the Am-
erican sabotage and terror mach-
ine has, with the collaboration of
some Zionist officials, penetrated
Zionist and Jewish philanthropic

organizations and used them for |

its purposes.
@

In the last few weeks, since
the trial of Slansky and others in
Prague, I have met rabbis.

I have attended synagogue ser- ~

vices, talked with Jewish citizens,
both orthodox and _ unbelieving,
party and non-party, young and

The French bourgeois revolu-
tion initiated the emancipation of
the Jews. As a result of the
revolution of 1848 and the growthi
of the democratic movement the
Jews formally received equal
rights in a number of European
countries. However, as the re-
volutionary movement of the pro-
letariat grew, the bourgeoisie
turned. to anti-Semitism and
other forms of racial discrimina-
tion as a means of struggle against
the revolutionary movement of
the popular masses.

e /

In Russia the persecution of
Jews was especially intensified to-
ward the end of the 19th century
when. anti-Semitism began to be
widely used by the tsarist govern-
ment along with other means of
struggle against the growing re-
volutionary movement. “All the
calculations of the Black Hundreds

were built on the opposition of in-—

terests of the various nations, pois-'
oning the consciousness of the
dark and forgotten masses,” wrote
VI. Lenin (Collected Works, 4th
ed., vol. 20, p. 215).
* The Jews were restricted in
- their rights by. the tsarist govern-
ment, were not permitted to enter
government service, were accept-
ed into institutions of higher
‘learning in limited numbers ‘and
could live only in the so-called
Pale. All this lay heavily on the
shoulders of the Jewish workers;
the top members of the bourgeo-
isie found ways to get around
these limitations. In the years of
the first Russian revolution tsar-
ism utilized “The Union of the
Russian People” and other Black
Hundred reactionary organiza-
tions and let loose on the Jews
wild pogroms embracing a num-
ber of cities and villages. The per-
secution of the Jews became even

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{4

old, students and greybeards. |
I have talked to Jewish
and women,’in humble jobs or
prominent in public life.
Not only is there no alarm, .no

men

perturbation. There is no sign
even of apprehension.
The stories to the contrary are

complete and utter rubbish.

The Jewish people I met talked
of their work, their hopes, their
plans, their children, in perfect
calm, just as they have done
when I have met them in these
lands before.

oviet position on

more intensified during the period
of the Stolypin reaction.
@

Anti-Semitism met a sharp re-.
pulse on the part of wide strata of '

Russian workers and peasants and
the representatives of the demo-
cratic intelligentsia, Maxim Gorky
branded anti-Semitism as an “act
of the corruption of feelings and
thoughts of Russian society.” The

_ Russian workers and the Jewish

proletariat fought against ariti-
Semitism together.

“Not the Jews are the enemies
of the workers,’ pointed out V.
I. Lenin: “The enemy ‘of the
workers are the capitalists of all
lands. Among the Jews are work-
ers, hard-working men and women
—they are in the majority. They
are our brothers in oppression by
capital, our comrades in the strug-
gle for socialism.” (Collected
Works, 3rd ed., vol. 24, P. 203.)

In the USSR the victory of so-
cialism destroyed the soil for anti-
Semitism. The exploiting classes
that had nourished and supported
anti-Semitism were liquidated: In
the USSR all nations and races
“have equal rights in all spheres
of the economic, political, social
and cultural life of the country.”
(Stalin, On the Project of the
Constitution of the USSR, 1949,
Dp. Qi) 43

ss 7

_In_seapitalist countries today
anti-Semitism is widely used by
the reactionary imperialist bourg-

eoisie to sow discord among dif-

ferent nationalities with the aim
of diverting the masses from the
struggle for their social emancipa-
tion. In spreading their wildly
fantastic concoctions concerning
the racial inequalities of peoples,
the Hitlerites, immediately upon
the establishment in Germany of
ees cre ae dictatorship

Often the trials and arrests
were never mentioned. They didn’t
happen to arise.

If they happened to come up
in conversation, they were dis-
cussed as something that would
not, or could not, touch the speak-
ers, as they could touch no honest
men.

Something more. I have trav-
elled in public transport in all
these countries, shopped, visited
theatres and sports arenas, chat-
ted with passers-by.

Nobody, from my appearance,
could be under the slightest illu-
sion respecting my Jewish origin.

Sometimes I wore winter cloth-
ing, borrowed from friends and
then, at least before I spoke, must
haye appeared a domestic citizen.

When chatting, of course, my
identity as a foreign Jew was
clear.

_ At no time, in no place, from
anybody, did I, in either character,
encounter the slightest discourtesy
or hostility.

Nor did I encounter any quali-
fication in friendliness and help-
fulness. On such a point a Jew
cannot be mistaken. ; e.

I have stood with hundreds ap-
plauding a Jewish prima donna.

I have clapped with thousands,
cheering on a Jewish sports
champion. :

Nowhere among any of these
hosts was there the slightest sign
of reservation in the admiration
or encouragement.

@

There could not .be. For, in
these countries the Jew is a human
being and human beings are re-
spected. —

In the last few hours I have
received a letter from a Jewish
‘friend in Poland. He talks cheer-
fully of his work and plans.

I have also received a message
from a Jewish friend in Russia.
He speaks brightly of his family.

On my breakfast table I found
a letter written only four days
since 'by a Jewish woman of 73.

a, half-hour’s flight from Pragu®

I hear again the glorious choral a
chant of the oldest Bucharest syn eS

She returned to her homeland
Eastern Germany—two years 28°

In her letter she recounts he
happiness and the surprise she ™
galed her family’ with a few days
ago—a bronze needle of honor
and a certificate to celebrate her
50th half-shift as a volunteer 0?
the rebuilding of Berlin. 2

She enclosed a newspaper cub
ting praising her, with portrait. —
e :

Have Jews in these countries
any worries? ie

Yes. Certainly they have—but
of a kind very different from! that
pretended in the falsehood spread
by the U.S. State Department.

The worries are of a kind from
which these falsehoods are de
signed to distract attention.

I hear the voice of the Chief
Rabbi of Bulgaria, throbbing with
indignation, as she speaks of the
release of the Nazi war crimin@
in the British Zone of Germanys

and the evils this can portend for —

Jewry and the world.

I sit, the supper things cleared
away, with a Jewish friend

Strasnice, Czechoslovakia, his lov@

ly fair-haired wife beside him an
their bright four-year-old chil
playing on the floor.

He asked: “How is the peace”
movement in Britain? Realise
what it means for us here — the —
American bombers are less than

gogue. The lamps cast exquisl os
shadows, the worshippers are TaP
in the serenity of Sabbath eve™
ing service.

Anger boils in me at the venal
ity, the recklessness or the 84
bility with which certain spoke®
men in the Western countric
Jewish and non-Jewish, risk 1
shattering of their peace and hap
piness by tearing up the Nint
Commandment — “Thou shalt 2°
bear false witness’—in the inte™
ests of war. :

anti-Semitism

(1933), placed the Jewish popu-
lation outside the law and came
own on them with savage per-
secutions.

The anti-Semitic cannibalistic
policy of Hitlerism took on an es-

pecially monstrous character dur-

ing the period of the Second
World War, setting itself the aim
of the enslavement or anihilation
of all peoples, first and foremost
of the Slavic people.

The Hitlerites in just one camp
of annihilation, Auschwitz, de-

stroyed ‘over’ 5,000,000 people,
among them over 2,500,000 of
Jewish origin, from among the

populations of countries and ter-
ritories temporarily occupied by

them.

‘The International Military Trib-
unal, after examination in 1946 of
the criminal deeds of the Hitler-
ites, established that the Gestapo
alone killed about 6,000,000 Jews.
Only the victory. of the Soviet
Union in the Great Patriotic War
against Hitlerite Germany and her
allies and satellites, having put an
end to the criminal Hitlerite re-
gime, did away with its cannibal-
istic policy.

After the Second World War,
imperialist reaction in Great Brit-
ain, the United States of America
and other capitalist countries be-
gan intensively to stimulate anti-
Semitism. The system of racial

discrimination and terror against -

national minorities inherent in the
United States, as it is in all cap-
italist multi-national states, be-
came especially widespread in con-
nection with the intensified fas-
cisation of that state after the
Second World War.
Anti-Semitism along with the
racial discrimination against the
Negroes, the Chinese, the Slavs
and others, became the means for

\

the propagation of the racist 20
sense of the Anglo-American
perialists, following in the foot g
steps of their German predece™
sors.

Just as in the United States ps
in Great Britain and in oth?
capitalist countries, anti-Semitist
finds its reflection in pogrom”
practices, in heinous articles p a
lished in the corrupt pourgee,”
press, in a system of social, a
ficial and other restrictions 72!§
against the Jewish populat
Anti-Semitism is one of the ¥ ¥
ied aspects of racism, is used ts
the Anglo-American imperiae
for the purpose of strugelit
against democracy and progr
and for the inflaming of ®
world war.

jon

A consistent struggle against
anti-Semitism in capitalist cone
tries is being conducted onl ty
the parties of the working © 4.
by the parties of the Commun

“National and. racial chau
ism,” says J. V. Stalin, “is 4 x
ige of the misanthropic ae
peculiar to the period of can? ost
ism. Anti-Semitism, as the 74,
extreme form of chauvinis™ Sie
the most dangerous sutviv® 5.
cannibalism, Anti - Semitis™ ok
useful to the exploiters as @ S ut
absorber, pulling capitalism. the
from under the blows °F js _
working class. Anti-Semitis™
dangerous to the working oer an
a false path leading them off hem
the correct road. and leading t)
into the jungles. Therefore ©...
munists, as consistent intern@ ple
alists, cannot but be irrecoOn’” ne
enemies of anti-Semitism. man
USSR, anti-Semitism is ™°
erely prosecuted as a phenom”
deeply inimical to the Sovlé
der.”

vil
est

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 13, 1953 — PAGE 1° ,

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