RETURN OF THE SCAPEGOAT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 728, 26 June 1953, Page 5

RETURN OF THE SCAPEGOAT

Sir,-I repeat, in reply to Mr. Barnard, that-with the exception of Mr. Lehmann-no Jew has sat in the United States Senate since the Civil War (1864). There is not a single Jew holding the post of even Assistant Secretary in the Eisenhower administration. Is it merely coincidence that the American Government, which inveighs hypothetically against anti-Semitism behind the Iron Curtain, is so completely Judenrein? In the Socialist countries we find that Czechoslovakia has a Jewish Foreign Minister and a Jewish Minister of Jus-tice-the man, incidentally, who brought the Slansky gang to book. In Hungary the President, in Poland, the Vice-Presi-dent, and in Rumania the Foreign Minister, are Jews. The percentage of Jewish population in these countries is not more than one per cent. In the United States it is three’ per cent. The Jewish Frontier, an American Zionist (and anti-Communist) paper has this'to say in its January issue: "If by anti-Semitism we mean _ exclusion of Jews from summer resorts, or from medical colleges, or from residence in specific locations, or from holding certain public offices, then we must admit that there has been no anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union for many years." All these things are commonplaces in the United States the paper points out. It is there that we find the bombing of synagogues, the "church nearby" advertisements, the hooligan attacks on Jewish

schoolchildren. With other manifestations of the jungle morality of capitalism they have been abolished from the Soviet Union. That is why I am and shall remain its fervent defender. From an American friend I have recently received two cuttings from’ the New York Times. One dated Berlin, January 28, reports that that day, in the Eastern part of that city, in three separate trials, persons who had slandered Jews had received up to two years at hard labour. "Hurrah," I say for Socialist East Germany. The other from Williamsburg, Mass., dated February 9, states that the Williams College Chapter of Phi Delta Theta had been suspended for accepting a Jewish student in contravention of a clause in its constitution that restricted membership to "men of white and full Aryan blood." "Shame," I say on the capitalist United States. ‘s These are facts. I deal in nothing else. If, in face of them, Mr. Barnard: still maintains that anti-Semitism is tolerated in the Soviet Union he is incapable of distinguishing black from white.

J. W.

WINCHESTER

(Wellington),

Sir,-I do sympathise with J. W. Winchester in having to live in such a deplorable country as ours and in such a deplorable Empire. Only a fervent missionary spirit could fortify him for such an ordeal, but our Government may be induced to relax the passport restrictions to permit him and others to go to his ideal Russia and thus leave some room for the poor oppressed and dispossessed Maori. Nothing discounts the efforts of the admirer of Russia so much as his apparent reluctance to go and live in that earthly paradise. If he could only go there and send us photographs and reports of the joyous conditions which we may expect if we adopt Russian rule, we could be suitably im-

pressed.

W.

S.

(Tauranga).

(This correspondence is now closed.-Ed.)