Chapter 15

, great emphasis is placed on attracting noncommunists, the more prominent the better, into communist propaganda work. These noncommunists, by allowing their names to be used as sponsors, giving testimonials, or appearing at front rallies, are aiding the Party. It cannot be emphasized too often how the communists attempt to exploit for strictly partisan purposes the legitimate interests of noncommunists in social and economic problems, world peace, civil rights, and so forth.

Most important to fronts are mailing lists containing the names of persons to whom literature can be sent. Perhaps you have received such propaganda in the mail and wondered whence it came. Party-front mailing lists are compiled in many ways—from telephone books, directories, membership rolls of infiltrated organizations (“loaned” by concealed members). Then the daily press is followed. Front headquarters may jot down the names of officers in noncommunist organizations. You never know. Someday they might “come in handy.”

Party fronts are aggressive. To wait for the noncommunist is wrong. Seek him out. “We must get into the neighborhoods more and into the home.” Through rallies, parades, picket lines, forums, debates, circulation of literature, fronts are constantly seeking public support. They operate on the main streets of America.

Another thing: The agitation is always practical. Talk about peace, jobs, and the price of milk, not Marx’s ideas of revolution. Link the struggle with “the fight for pork chops.”

Peace is an everyday issue and ... should involve the housewife, the woman who has to wrestle with budgets in the hopeless struggle with taxes, high prices and a shrinking pay check.

In one instance, for example, a cookbook was issued by a front, a “dollar stretcher” containing low-priced menus. Here is the point. These recipes will help, somewhat. But, Mrs. Housewife, you can never hope for a stable economy (where prices are always low) until “peace” (Soviet style) is achieved.

That’s mixing propaganda with eggs and butter, sugar and salt.

Many times, trick “come-ons” are used. Consider communist-sponsored forums, for instance. Here are some Party-suggested topics:

—Are American marriages a failure?

—How to find an apartment.

—Should the voting age be reduced to eighteen years?

—Future of youth, what is it?

—Can heart disease be cured?

—Can cancer be cured or prevented?

—How to become a cultured person.

What have these to do with communism? Nothing. But they bring listeners within talking distance.

If one thing won’t work, maybe another will, such as a special celebration, in which a front sponsors an exhibit of “peace” literature or Russian photographs. Then there are round-robin letters, chain telephone calls, forums for high school science teachers. One front sold “Christmas seals.” Another was planning to put out a leaflet. “Fine,” commented an associate, “but be sure to add the inscription which appears on the Statue of Liberty. That’ll make it sound better.” Festivals and rallies, often featuring foreign “dignitaries,” attract hundreds, even thousands. Don’t forget to conduct polls on the street, always securing through partisan manipulation “proof” that the “people” support points advocated in the Party line.

Communist Parties around the world collaborate whenever it will advance their cause. Some years ago a women’s conference was convened in Paris, France, and out of it grew the Women’s International Democratic Federation.

Long before the Paris gathering the Communist Party went to work promoting delegations of American women. One hundred telegrams were sent out from Communist Party headquarters in New York City to leaders of various women’s organizations, announcing that they had been chosen as delegates and inviting them to attend a meeting at the home of the chairman of the committee. A temporary Committee on Cooperation with the International Women’s Conference came into being to make arrangements. An expediter was appointed to get passports, and a special rate of 495 dollars for a round trip by plane was secured. And so the ladies went to Paris, many without the slightest idea that the affair had been promoted by the Communist Party.

Out of the Women’s International Democratic Federation grew its American affiliate, the Congress of American Women. Shortly after the Congress had its first meeting, the National Committee of the Communist Party met in New York City. At this meeting one of its members discussed the importance of the Women’s International Democratic Federation to the Communist Party. This high Party official then stated that the Party did not then control the newly created Congress of American Women, and that the communists needed to “infiltrate it more.” The Congress has since been designated as a subversive organization by the Attorney General, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Earlier in this chapter we spoke of international fronts. The following is an example:

An envelope was postmarked at Prague, Czechoslovakia, addressed to an American college. Inside was a printed letter signed by the Prorector and Secretary of Charles University, Prague, formerly renowned as a great European educational institution, now a communist propaganda front. The letter opened:

We send you the Proclamation of the Charles University against the use [by the United States] of the bacteriological warfare in Korea and urge you to express your views on the named Proclamation.

Enclosed was the “PROCLAMATION of the Academic Community of the Charles University....”

As you read the message, note the propaganda techniques employed:

1. _The appeal prostitutes the reputation of a well-known university for propaganda purposes_: “We, professors, lecturers and the other scientific workers of the Charles University in Prague, one of the oldest universities of the world....”

2. _The appeal allegedly is based on humanitarian and scientific grounds_: “With full responsibility to our human and scientific consciences we have considered the danger which threatens all of humanity through the crimes that are being committed by the American imperialist army.”

3. _The appeal is directed to scientific teachers in universities._ The idea is that an appeal from a member of one profession or occupation to another is more effective than random appeals. This device is often used, with Russian writers, artists, musicians addressing their “counterparts” in America: “We address ourselves to you, scientific workers of universities of all countries....”

4. _The weight of scholarly backing is designed to influence opinion._ (If scientists in this university say the charges are true, they must be true.) For example:

These facts prove that the armies of the American interventionists have repeatedly used bacteriological weapons.

* * * * *

From the American airplanes bombs were dropped containing different kind of insects, rats, etc., which were infected with plague, cholera and other epidemic diseases, and infected foodstuffs as well.

* * * * *

... we are ashamed to think of those American members of medical science who have committed themselves to the preparation of these repulsive crimes.

5. _Action is recommended_: “We urge you to refuse to place your scientific knowledge at the service of mass extermination of mankind.... Protest not only in your activity as teachers and in your work in the scientific press, but with your governments as well!”

The proclamation is designed to make a lie believable, to paint the United States as a murderer and the Soviet Union as a protector of peace, thanks to a dignified and “respectable” front.

Most of this communist propaganda would be laughable except for its deadly seriousness. The Party is not kidding. This is live ammunition designed to capture, maim, and kill. To regard communist fronts and their propaganda as foolishness is to risk our freedom.

Examine the communist attitude toward parades, for example. Most people think of parades as a time of interest and commemoration. Not the communists. Parades are weapons of propaganda, another form of front.

Listen to these Party instructions, for example, concerning parades, issued by the old Central Committee of the Party before it was abolished:

The marchers must be well mannered. Walk in rhythm. Don’t be “a line of stragglers shuffling along like a tired and discouraged army in retreat.”

The result is that the value of the demonstration as a means of impressing and winning over or neutralizing hostile people along the line of march is lost.

Here are a few things that should be remembered:

Every two or three hundred marchers should be led by a band, a bugle or fife and drum corps. We need scores of bands, with plenty of brass instruments.

Banners and placards! Do not be “stingy with the length of sticks.” Cut out the fancy lettering. It is difficult to read.

Use good English. “Some slogans are so bad grammatically, that people are amused at seeing them.” The fewer the words the better. Don’t just “slap” slogans on cardboard. Make sure they are “politically correct.”

More advice: carry placards “on a slight angle, with wording facing the sidewalks.” Scatter them through the parade; avoid bunching. Streamers: too much pulling causes ripping; not enough causes folding.

A favorite field for communist fronts is the election campaign for public office. Running communist candidates for city council, mayor, governor, even for the presidency of the United States, is an old Party habit. Never has the Party, running under its own name, been able to secure many votes. In instances where Party candidates have run under their own colors, their defeats have almost invariably been disastrous. Party candidates have run five times (1924 through 1940) for the presidency of the United States and in 1932 achieved their highest percentage of the total vote cast—a mere 0.3 per cent, or 102,991 out of almost 40,000,000 votes cast. Three times the percentage was 0.1, and once, 0.2. In instances, however, where the Party has maneuvered political alliances, it has achieved more success, as shown by the election of Benjamin J. Davis, Jr., and Peter Cacchione, both well-known communists, to the City Council of New York City in the 1940’s. Yet these campaigns give training in agitation and enable the Party to smear rivals, scream its propaganda, and cause unrest.

Party candidates also frequently run in concealed capacities. Board-of-education campaigns are well suited to communist exploitation. Usually running as independents, Party candidates can conceal their true affiliations. Moreover, national and international issues that would betray their basic sentiments, such as the Russian intervention in Hungary, are not likely to arise. In such campaigns Party-sponsored candidates are invited to parent-teacher meetings, community centers, public forums, to participate in radio debates (when the time is donated), and speak in the homes of private citizens. “The Citizens (or Independent) Committee for ——” takes the candidate where, as a communist, he could never dream of going. The Party, behind the scenes, works overtime stuffing propaganda into envelopes, passing out cards, drumming up enthusiasm.

The results are often amazing. William Z. Foster in one of his books boasts that in Cleveland, Ohio, “A. Krchmarek, Communist candidate for the school board, received 64,213 votes,” while in California, “the well-known Communist, Bernadette Doyle, polled the big total of 613,670 votes on a nonpartisan ticket as candidate for Superintendent of Public Schools.” Krchmarek and Doyle both ran on independent, nonpartisan tickets and were not identified on the ballot as communists. In another instance a Party member, also running in a concealed capacity, failed by only a few votes to be elected a city official. He was supported by two anticommunist newspapers that had no way of knowing his Party background.

This is the communist-front movement. Its strength rests on deceit and its ability to attract the support of noncommunists.

Fronts, however, can be detected. You, as an alert citizen, can do much to weaken their influence. Here are a few tests:

1. Does the organization espouse the cause of Soviet Russia? Does it shift when the Party line shifts?

2. Does the organization feature as speakers at its meetings known communists or sympathizers?

3. Does the organization sponsor causes, campaigns, literature, petitions, or other activities sponsored by the Party or other front organizations?

4. Is the organization used as a sounding board by, or is it endorsed by, communist-controlled labor unions?

5. Does its literature follow the communist line or is it printed by the communist press?

6. Does the organization receive consistent favorable mention in communist publications?

7. Does the organization represent itself to be nonpartisan, yet engage in political activities and consistently advocate causes favored by the communists? Does it denounce both fascists and communists?

8. Does the organization denounce American foreign policy while always lauding Soviet policy?

9. Does the organization utilize communist double talk by referring to Soviet-dominated countries as democracies, complaining that the United States is imperialistic, and constantly denouncing monopoly-capital?

10. Have outstanding leaders in public life openly renounced affiliation with the organization?

11. Does the organization, if espousing liberal, progressive causes, attract well-known, honest, patriotic liberals, or does it denounce well-known liberals?

12. Does the organization consistently consider matters not directly related to its avowed purposes and objectives?

These are some ways, direct and indirect, of the above-ground Communist Party, which is working against all of us. But this is only one arm of a gigantic pincer. The other is underground.

18.

_Communism and Minorities_

The Communist Party from its very inception has held itself out as the “vanguard of the working class,” and as such has sought to assume the role of protector and champion of minorities. It directs special attention, among others, to Negroes and nationality groups. Actually the vast majority of Negroes and members of foreign-language groups have rejected communism for what it is: a heartless, totalitarian way of life which completely disregards the dignity of man.

In the case of the Negro minority the Comintern began in 1928 to lay down a specific Party line for the guidance of comrades in the United States. According to Comintern instructions, Negroes were to be considered as an “oppressed race.” The Party was told to carry on a struggle “for equal rights,” but “in the South ... the main Communist slogan must be: _The Right of Self-Determination of the Negroes in the Black Belt_.”

Communist leaders, faithfully following Moscow’s instructions, promptly started a campaign of agitation. In nominating James W. Ford, a Negro, to run for Vice-President of the United States on the Communist Party ticket in 1932, with presidential candidate William Z. Foster, C. A. Hathaway, then a member of the Party’s Election Campaign National Committee, reiterated instructions received in a 1930 Comintern resolution:

In the first place, our demand is that the land of the Southern white landlords ... be confiscated and turned over to the Negroes....

Secondly, we propose to break up the present artificial state boundaries ... and to establish the state unity of the territory known as the “Black Belt,” where the Negroes constitute the overwhelming majority of the population.

Thirdly, in this territory, we demand that the Negroes be given the complete right of self-determination; _the right to set up their own government_ in this territory and the right to separate, if _they_ wish, from the United States.

Hence, “equal rights” and “self-determination” in the Black Belt became the Party’s chief slogans for Negroes. By “self-determination” the Party meant what Stalin had said: “... the right of the oppressed peoples of the dependent countries and colonies to complete secession, as the right of nations to independent existence as states.”

As for the “Black Belt,” or as one article termed it, the “new Negro Republic,” the communists have given various descriptions. In 1948 they described the Belt as extending through twelve Southern states: “Heading down from its eastern point in Virginia’s tidewater section, it cuts a strip through North Carolina, embraces nearly all of South Carolina, cuts into Florida, passes through lower and central Georgia and Alabama, engulfs Mississippi and the Louisiana Delta, wedges into eastern Texas and Southwest Tennessee, and has its western anchor in southern Arkansas.”

By 1952 the communist concept of the Black Belt had been narrowed to “at least five Southeastern states, with port outlets at Charleston on the Atlantic and Mobile on the Gulf, encompassing the bulk of Mississippi, and a good section of South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.”

As we know from cumulative evidence, the Party’s position toward Negroes is determined not by concern for their welfare but obedience to Soviet foreign policy. As World War II approached, for example, the Party switched its tactics regarding “self-determination” in the Black Belt. Instead of calling for the immediate and revolutionary overthrow of white landlords, as the Comintern had originally instructed, the Party now switched these demands to a purely theoretical and propaganda level: “... It is clear that the Negro masses are not yet ready to carry through the revolution which would make possible the right to self-determination.” Why the shift? To satisfy the Party’s united-front program, which demanded that the Party work harmoniously with other groups to strengthen the Soviet Union.

The World War II period found the Party cynically abandoning any alleged struggle for Negro rights. The aim was to help not Negroes but Moscow. “When we fought for the right of Negro workers to enter industries we often fought for such jobs mainly in the interest of the war effort.” Earl Browder in 1945 admitted that as early as 1942 the Party had adopted the theory that “... the struggle for Negro rights must be postponed until after the war....” The Negro, in communist eyes, was a mere pawn, to be manipulated for the attainment of Party aims.

It became obvious that the Party, despite great efforts, had failed to win over even a significant minority of Negroes. Negroes resented the Party’s severe criticism of Negro clergymen who had been vigorously denouncing communism. Earlier the Party had been unable adequately to justify Russia’s aid to Italy in its invasion of Ethiopia. American Negroes had realized that the Party was a fraud and a deception and that it was willing to betray the Negro to better serve Soviet Russia.

In early 1956 the Party decided to modify its advocacy of “self-determination,” realizing that Negro opposition to communism was growing. In making this change, communists said they would still consider the Negroes as constituting a national as well as a racial minority.

Eugene Dennis, resuming his old post as General Secretary of the Communist Party (in 1956) after serving a prison term for violation of the Smith Act, said:

In re-appraising our position on self-determination in the Black Belt, our Party should emphasize, as never before, that the struggle for Negro rights and freedom, north and south of the Mason-Dixon line, has emerged as a general, national democratic task, upon the solution of which depends the democratic and social advance of the whole nation, particularly of the workers and farmers.

The Party’s claim that it is working for Negro rights is a deception and a fraud. The Party’s sole interest, as most American Negroes know, is to hoodwink the Negro, to exploit him and use him as a tool to build a communist America.

The Party has made vigorous efforts to infiltrate the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This organization in 1950 authorized its board of directors to revoke the charter of any chapter found to be communist-controlled. Nevertheless the Party has tried various infiltration tactics:

—In Philadelphia, the Party secured NAACP applications and instructed Party members to join.

—In Louisiana, the Party’s District Organizer instructed all Negro Party members to join the NAACP and urge the creation of a youth organization, and to form committees to encourage Negroes to register to vote.

—In Gary, Indiana, a Party member, also an NAACP member, promoted the signing of petitions to pass a city ordinance.

—In Cincinnati, a Party Organizer instructed that Party members call the NAACP and urge the holding of a city-wide mass meeting. When calling, they should claim to be members of the NAACP.

The NAACP’s national leadership has vigorously denounced communist attempts at infiltration. In 1956, when the NAACP and other organizations sponsored a National Conference on Civil Rights in Washington, the Party attempted to “move in,” and started promoting the conference. The NAACP countered by screening the delegates.

Similarly, in 1957, in the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, the Party again attempted to move in and tried to exploit the pilgrimage as a rallying point for unity. NAACP leaders publicly told the communists that they were not welcome, and steps were taken to keep them off the platform. One outstanding Negro leader even tried to cancel the pilgrimage to prevent communists from propagandizing the event. Concerning Paul Robeson, who has long fronted for the communists, he stated: “... the boat is waiting to take him to Russia....” He added that he would raise the necessary funds to defray expenses. In Philadelphia, a Negro clergyman told the Baptist Ministers Conference that the Negro people did not want the communists interfering with their problems.

One of the most effective anticommunist measures I have heard of is the following: The NAACP had a meeting in Norfolk, Virginia, presided over by a clergyman. The minister opened the meeting with the simple statement that if any members of the Communist Party were present they would be excused. Silence ensued, with no person leaving. Then the chairman, starting with the front row, asked each individual if he were a communist. All entered denials until he got to the back of the room, where the state organizer for the Communist Party was sitting with a white woman. When asked the question, he tried to evade, but the minister pinned him down. The state organizer then stated that he did not think it was proper to ask such a question. The minister calmly replied, “You are excused,” and the couple left.

The Communist Party has stated: “The Negro race must understand that capitalism means racial oppression and Communism means social and racial equality.” Many Negroes, however, have learned by bitter experience how fraudulent and deceitful communists are. For example, Richard Wright, the Negro novelist, tells in the book, _The God That Failed_, why he rebelled against communist thought control. In describing how at the time he left the Party he was assaulted on a Chicago street, he wrote, “I could not quite believe what had happened, even though my hands were smarting and bleeding. I had suffered a public, physical assault by two white Communists with black Communists looking on.”

In Buffalo, New York, at a Party meeting, a Negro comrade stated that many Negroes felt they were joining a union when they were recruited into the Party. The comrade, however, was stopped at this point and not permitted to speak further. In many cases Negroes have been recruited by deceptive methods with the hope that once in the Party they would be converted to communism. In one New York State club the functionary learned that thirty members thought they were joining a union rather than the Communist Party. The matter was investigated, and it turned out that a Negro woman had become overly enthusiastic in a membership drive. She had not fully explained the nature of the organization being joined.

In San Francisco, Party functionaries were concerned about a club where Negro members predominated, although the club was actually controlled by white members. It was ordered that the role of the white members be decreased. The functionaries also instructed that the club be carefully watched to prevent scandals, and warned that, while scandals must be prevented, care should be exercised not to convey the impression that white girls should not mix socially with Negroes or vice versa. Some of the Negro wives were becoming suspicious, as it seemed they were being pushed into the background after their husbands joined the Party.

The Communist Party, while preaching “equality,” still differentiates between races. For example, in the 1957 convention of the Party, an accurate record of the delegates was kept. The breakdown was as follows: 209 males, 78 females; 54 Negroes, 2 Mexicans, and 1 Puerto Rican. The hypocrisy of the Party was clearly shown when it required each delegate to register his race, although for years the Party publicly has campaigned to have the blank for “race” removed from all questionnaires.

Communist leaders have been complaining bitterly about the turnover of Negro members and of the Party’s inability to indoctrinate any large number of Negroes. Information we have received follows a regular pattern: Negroes are rejecting communism.

A Negro in the Midwest became interested in the Party because it claimed that Negroes were treated as equals. Later he was unjustly accused of consorting with a white non-Party member. He quit.

* * * * *

A Negro in Illinois started going to Party social functions and became impressed with communist talk of “equality.” But when he attended more advanced meetings and heard the United States constantly denounced, he came to the conclusion that the communists were under the domination of Russia. He left the Party.

* * * * *

A Negro woman, recruited in Chicago, was rapidly promoted by the Party. Then she noticed an incident involving a Negro man who got into difficulties on his job, but the Party refused to support him. She concluded that the Party was interested in neither trade unionism nor the welfare of Negroes. She quit.

* * * * *

A Negro in New York joined the Party because he felt it was championing his race. After a period of Marxist instruction, he was told to secure a job with a work gang at a pier and to recruit other Negroes into the Party. He came to the conclusion that the Party was not interested in him as a Negro but only as a tool to recruit other Negroes. He quit.

* * * * *

A New England Negro also became interested in the Party when he learned of its alleged interest in helping his race. But upon becoming a member he discovered that the Party’s interest was strictly vocal, and nothing concrete was done to help Negroes. Moreover, he disliked the Party’s denunciation of God and religion. He quit.

As early as 1922 the Comintern approved a subsidy of 300,000 dollars for propaganda among American Negroes. In 1925 the Soviets requested that a group of Negroes be selected to come to Russia for training in propaganda work. A dozen were recruited. One of these, returning to the United States three years later, brought with him a draft for 75,000 dollars to help pay for propaganda work among his race.

One Negro later was designated to attend the Lenin School, and his experience there further unmasked communist hypocrisy and the Party’s true feelings toward the Negro. He went to Russia with a delegation of students to enter the Lenin School. This young Negro, as he has since related, then “believed that through Communism a better and fairer world could be developed for all mankind.”

He was troubled, however, by the communist position in urging Negro “self-determination” and the implications of a “buffer” state in this country being carved out of the so-called “Black Belt.” Almost immediately after his arrival in Russia he “was told long stories of political persecution” by the Negroes attending the Lenin School. He was slow to give credence to these stories until he saw for himself: “I found that Negroes were special objects of political exploitation. The sacrifices and dirty work planned for the American Negro Communists as spearheads for communizing the United States made it obvious that we were considered only as pawns in a game where others would get the prize.”

Becoming more outspoken and cynical about the communist program for Negroes, he became the target of a slander campaign inside the Lenin School. Finally this young American Negro was charged and tried before a court-martial. He was guilty of disaffection. A few students, sympathizing with his position, made a bold decision to report their grievances to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Then things began to happen. Classes in the American Section of the school were suspended. Some of the instructors were disciplined.

The young Negro explained that the Comintern ordered Earl Browder, then Secretary of the Communist Party in the United States, to Moscow immediately. Browder arrived and sought to smooth things over. Eventually the young Negro returned to the United States, working for a while as a Party functionary in Detroit. One of his last jobs was to make preparations for the founding of the National Negro Congress. Then he quit because he could no longer give aid to the communists “concentrating on their most helpless, and whom they think to be, their most gullible victims: the Negro.”

The communists have created numerous fronts over the years in attempts to attract Negroes. Once a front is discredited, it is allowed to die and a new one created.

The American Negro Labor Congress came into being in 1925, and in 1930 its name was changed to the League of Struggle for Negro Rights. Within six years it had ceased to exist.

In 1935 the National Negro Congress was launched in Washington, D.C., its chief purpose being to protect Negro rights. It started out as noncommunist, and James W. Ford complained in 1936 that although “The National Negro Congress did not adopt a Communist program ... we Communists stand one hundred per cent behind it in its efforts to unite the Negro people....”

By 1940 communists had infiltrated the National Negro Congress to such an extent that when its president, A. Philip Randolph, “warned the Congress to stick to its principle and remain nonpartisan ...” the communists staged a demonstration and walked out, leaving only a third of the audience to finish hearing Randolph. This 1940 convention of the National Negro Congress passed a resolution condemning the war as “imperialist,” and drew from a communist writer the observation that the congress had “only acted in accord with the fundamental interests of the Negro people.”

In 1947 the National Negro Congress merged with the Civil Rights Congress, an out-and-out communist front which has recently dissolved.

The old International Labor Defense (ILD) also tried to influence the American Negro, and came into conflict with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as a result of the ILD’s communist tactics in converting the Scottsboro (Alabama) Case into a vehicle for communist propaganda. In this case nine Negro boys were indicted in 1931 on charges of having raped two white girls.

After the Scottsboro boys were first convicted, the NAACP charged that the defense “fell considerably short of perfection,” and then retained the late famed Chicago criminal lawyer, Clarence Darrow, to represent the boys. In 1931 the late Walter White, then head of the NAACP, said the _Daily Worker_ accused another defense attorney, Stephen R. Roddy, “... of being a member of the Ku Klux Klan, of having conspired with the prosecution to electrocute the nine boys, of having been the inmate of an insane asylum.” According to White, the communists also charged the NAACP “as being ‘in league with the lyncher-bosses of the South,’ as plotters to ‘murder the Scottsboro martyrs,’ as sycophantic ‘tools of the capitalists.’” The NAACP withdrew from the case, recognizing that the Communist Party was interested only in promoting “Red Fascism” in America.

George S. Schuyler, an editor of the _Pittsburgh Courier_, reflected the consensus of American Negroes when he concluded, “... The record shows that where and when the Communists seemed to be fighting for Negro rights, their object was simply to strengthen the hand of Russia.”

In similar fashion the Communist Party has long considered foreign-language groups in the United States fertile fields for infiltration. Since many of the early comrades were foreign-born, agitation among national groups became a natural outlet for Party activity. In recent years the Nationality Groups Commission has coordinated agitation in this field.

The Party has attempted to use national groups, among other things, to exert pressure for changes in American foreign policy. Pressure campaigns are organized, petitions circulated, testimonials secured, hoping to make the government believe that a national group, such as the Italians, Hungarians, or Slovaks, supports the line desired by the Party. Party-controlled newspapers grind out accompanying propaganda.

Party fronts have been particularly active among national groups. The communists always make strenuous efforts to infiltrate and capture fraternal insurance societies serving national groups. As we have seen, such tactics give the Party a ready base, along with somebody else’s money, for further agitation. The Party, moreover, always likes to pose as the “protector” of national cultures. Hence, it often sponsors nationality bazaars, picnics, and dances, where costumes from native lands are worn and native music is played. After the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe, however, the Party had increasing difficulty trying to peddle the “glories” of communism. Too much information was received from the old homelands describing true conditions behind the Iron Curtain.

Minority groups, like other patriotic organizations, have realized that no communist-created Utopia can compete with the American way of life. The ability of the communists to propagate their false doctrines is a challenge to our educational process. We need to counter communism by making the hopes and aspirations of the American ideal a reality for all to enjoy.

19.

_The Communist Attack on Judaism_

The communist propaganda machine with its tactics of infiltration and division has long fostered the false claim of widespread influence in the Jewish communities of America. One of the most malicious myths that has developed in the United States is that persons of the Jewish faith and communists have something in common. The people who gave the world the concept of our monotheistic God and the Ten Commandments cannot remain Jews and follow the atheism of Karl Marx and the deceit of the communist movement.

It is a matter of record that numerous Communist Party leaders call themselves Jews and claim a Jewish origin. This does not, however, make them Jews, any more than William Z. Foster’s Catholic background and Earl Browder’s Protestant background give them any standing in present-day Catholic and Protestant communities in the United States.

One highly placed Party leader recently pointed out that it was necessary for communists working in Jewish groups to represent themselves as Jews. This, of course, is a tactical maneuver. Such a technique, the leader urged, “can be duplicated.”

Typical of communist claims which have led to the false myth indicating that Jews have an affinity for communism are the remarks of Paul Novick, the editor of the _Morning Freiheit_, a communist paper published in Yiddish in New York City. Novick said: “The development of Yiddish literature in the United States went hand-in-hand with the growth of the Socialist movement at the beginning of this century and of the Communist Party after the October Revolution.” On the same occasion Novick then went on to brand the followers of Judaism for “... degeneration sown among the Jews by reaction....” and then condemned their opposition to “... the progressive movement, against the Soviet Union and against Communism....” Novick revealed his true loyalties in December, 1956, in an article in the _Morning Freiheit_ after the display of Soviet brutality in Hungary with the apology that there was an anti-Semitic and fascist element in the Hungarian uprising, and insisted that, “... we must not only approve the Soviet actions in Hungary, but really appreciate it!”

The widely read Jewish newspaper, _Jewish Daily Forward_, on February 16, 1957, effectively identified Novick in a story captioned “Editor of Communist ‘Freiheit’ Is Bitter Enemy of the Jewish People.” Here it was asserted that after the Hitler-Stalin pact the _Freiheit_ justified and praised it, which caused writers to leave and Novick made sure that those who remained wrote without error following the pro-Hitler line. The newspaper further revealed that Novick had gone out of his way to prove that the communist dictators in Czechoslovakia were correct in arresting Rudolph Slansky (and thirteen former communist leaders, eleven of whom were Jews) and that the arrested Moscow Jewish doctors were involved in a conspiracy to poison Stalin. The _Jewish Daily Forward_ article flatly said that “anti-Semitic poison just poured out” of Novick.

One Party member, after having been in the Party for twenty-five years and having held high Party offices, explained to our agents that when he joined the Party he had renounced the existence of God, that he had tried to impose on others his atheistic views, and that he was “not a religious Jew.” He flatly said that most Party members he knew who claimed to be Jews did not follow their religion; they did not attend the synagogue, although they did not work on religious holidays; and the comrades who claimed to be Jews took no part in organized Jewish religious activities.

Some of the most effective opposition to communism in the United States has come from Jewish organizations such as B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish League Against Communism, the Anti-Defamation League, and a host of other Jewish groups.

The reasons for the extensive activities of the Communist Party in seeking to infiltrate and make extravagant claims for its work in some Jewish organizations and those of other minority groups are readily apparent. In the Soviet Union, the proving ground for Marxism-Leninism, communists are confronted with a minority problem of staggering proportions. Only 58 per cent of the population in the Soviet Union is Russian whereas 42 per cent is non-Russian and consists of 168 national minorities.

The Bolsheviks prior to 1917 sought to win support from minorities by defending their rights and developing such propaganda come-ons as “self-determination of nations,” “national cultural autonomy,” and so on. Once in power, the communists soon forgot their promises but continued to pay lip service to minority rights. The Soviet Union still retains the “legal fiction” that it is a voluntary federation of union republics, each of which is free to secede if it wishes. In fact, Article 17 of the Soviet Constitution of 1936 states, “The right freely to secede from the USSR is reserved to each constituent republic.” No “republic,” however, has ever tried to secede, and the possibility is remote indeed, as long as the Red army responds to the will of the dictators in the Kremlin as it did in Hungary.

A more important reason for communist interest in minorities in the United States is, of course, the opportunities they provide for exploitation and propaganda. The large number of communist fronts using the word “Jewish,” as well as publications that the communists dominate, is for the obvious purpose of conveying a false impression of strength among those who embrace the Jewish faith. This also accounts in part for the literary interest communists devote to the problems of Jews. Prior to issuing the _Communist Manifesto_, Karl Marx, the atheist, wrote a treatise called, “On the Jewish Question” which sets forth his views regarding Judaism and Jewish culture.

From that time to this in dealing with those of the Jewish faith, the communists invariably do so in terms of discussing “the Jewish question.” In fact, by this propaganda technique the communists deliberately try to make the Jews a “problem,” which is denied by the record of good citizenship and civic responsibility of adherents of Judaism in the United States. As an example: The American Jewish League Against Communism stated as early as 1948 that “Soviet Russia’s million and a half Jews are the forgotten people of the world.” The League lists among its proudest achievements that “... it was the first American organization to expose and document the communist anti-Jewish policies.”

A true follower of the Jewish faith, like those of other religions, cannot embrace communism. Marxism-Leninism is irrevocably opposed to all religious beliefs and all forms of worship, whether they be Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or Moslem. One of Lenin’s basic teachings is, “We must combat religion—this is the A.B.C. of _all_ materialism, and consequently of Marxism.... The Marxist must be a materialist, i.e., an enemy of religion....”

In theory and practice the communists make no distinction among any of the world’s greater religions, as the leading Soviet crusader against religion, E. Yaroslavsky, makes clear:

... the priests of every cult have their own way of deluding the masses: the Jewish rabbi, the Roman Catholic priest, the Russian Orthodox priest, the Mohammedan mullah, the Evangelist, Baptist and other ministers of religion, each has his own way of fooling the people.... As to differences between one religion and another, they are of little, if any, consequence....

If there was ever any doubt that the communists were even lukewarm toward the Jewish faith, it was resolved by Yaroslavsky, onetime head of the League of Militant Atheists in the Soviet Union, who said:

The Jewish synagogues were not granted any privileges whatsoever by the Russian state, but they were fully supported by the Jewish bourgeoisie. The Jewish rabbinate, like its sister priestcrafts, drew close to the side of the rich because the Jewish church had also incorporated in its _credo_ the justification of the existence of exploiting classes in society....

Karl Marx described Judaism as “anti-social” and an expression of Jewish “egoism.” Marx, better than any other communist leader, illustrates the gulf between Jewish tradition and communism. He could not be loyal to both, so in accepting the communist ideal, he was not content to reject Jewish tradition; he had to malign it and seek to destroy it with such bitterness as: “Money is the jealous God of Israel, by the side of which no other god may exist.... Exchange is the Jew’s real God.”

The unrestrained emotional outbursts of Hitler against the Jews were reminiscent of the Marxian tirades against Judaism.

The Marxian denunciation of Judaism is not limited to invective. From the earliest days when communism came to power in the Soviet Union, communists have conducted a systematic campaign to cripple and destroy organized Judaism. On January 23, 1918, the Soviets issued a sweeping decree “On the Separation of the Church from the State, and of the School from the Church.” All church property was nationalized; churches were denied rights of legal recourse; the teaching of religion was banned in public and private schools; the right of people to attend religious services on workdays was revoked; and records of births, marriages, and deaths were taken from the churches and put under the exclusive control of civil authorities.

While religious services were still allowed, the clergy was reduced to the status of second-class citizenship; a campaign of terror was launched leading to the arrest and imprisonment or execution of priests, rabbis, ministers, and other church leaders on such vague charges as “counter-revolutionary activity” or “crimes against the people.” Physical destruction of church property was conveniently explained as the “spontaneous” acts of “aroused” peasants and workers to conceal the real perpetrators, Soviet officialdom.

The main target, of course, was the Orthodox Church, which had long been the state church of Russia; but all other faiths suffered, including that of the Jews. The reports of refugees as compiled by Wladyslaw Kania in the book, _Bolshevism and Religion_, published by the Polish Library in New York City in 1946, prove the hypocrisy of the Soviet claim of minority protection with accounts as follows:

The Jews are morally persecuted, the young Jewish population is being brought up in un-religious ways....

* * * * *

The Jews in Russia are living only on the memories of the happy past....

* * * * *

... during the Jewish feast Purim ... the Jews, Soviet citizens, assembled for evening prayer. One of the neighbors reported them to the NKVD. The premises were raided and the host arrested and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.

* * * * *

The rabbis have been deported; “kosher” meat, etc., though promised, does not exist.... The synagogues and houses of worship have been closed....

General Walter Bedell Smith, after his three years as Ambassador to the Soviet Union, reported that in June, 1948, about thirty churches were open in Moscow, which included one Jewish synagogue for an estimated 300,000 Jews. During World War II General Smith reported, “But two religions—the Jewish and the Roman Catholic—did not gain even temporary benefits from the wartime policy of greater religious tolerance; in fact, on balance, it is probably safe to say that attacks upon them have been stepped up rather than relaxed in recent years.”

Communist reports on the state of Jews in the Soviet Union make little reference to Judaism as practiced. For example, the forty-seven-page communist propaganda pamphlet, written by Paul Novick and J. M. Budish, entitled _Jews in the Soviet Union_, makes only this single reference to Judaism:

Then, there are Jewish religious activities. I visited the main synagogue in Moscow during Yom Kippur. It was over-crowded, with people outside listening to the cantor through loud speakers.... I visited synagogues in Kiev, Vilna, Berditchev, Zhytomir. There are about 300 organized religious communities in the U.S.S.R....

The accuracy of this report is highly questionable, bearing in mind the cold, systematic communist program of extinguishing religion. Among the tactics employed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has been the liquidation of the traditional Jewish school system, including the primary school (Hedder), the secondary schools (the Talmud Torah), and the rabbinical school (the Jeshiva). Thus, when the present generation of Soviet Jews passes on, there will be no more rabbis.

This attack on Judaism becomes apparent when the role of the rabbi is considered. He is not merely a preacher; he is the teacher of Jewish moral law, the ritualistic laws governing the home, family, and individual; he presides at such religious ceremonies as the marriage, sits in ritualistic courts and supervises circumcisions and the preparation of kosher meat. Hence, in abolishing the rabbinical schools, the Soviets are gradually seeking the extinction of Judaism without a pogrom. Judaism cannot exist unless Hebrew is taught so that rabbis can study the Torah and Talmud in the original language in which they were written.

Communist practice and communist theory are in direct conflict. Communism, as we have seen, is essentially an international class movement and therefore regards national loyalty, other than communist loyalty, as a potential menace. The communists use “national rights” as a propaganda device and support national movements only when it serves the interests of the Soviet regime.

The communist propaganda line directed to Jewish people follows three general themes:

1. The Soviet Union offers the Jewish people complete freedom. As one apologist put it: “There is one spot on the earth where the Jewish people are not under increasing pressure, one spot where the Jews have full equality.... That is the socialist Soviet Union.”

2. The Soviets have created a national homeland for Russian Jews in the Jewish autonomous region of Birobidzhan (or Birobidjan), where they claim Jewish culture is flourishing.

3. In World War II the U.S.S.R. saved thousands of Jews from certain death from the Nazis.

Standing by themselves, these claims admittedly make an impressive appeal. If true, they would even justify the extravagant claim of Alexander Bittelman, who recently was released from prison upon completing a federal sentence for conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the government of the United States by force and violence. Bittelman, long one of the chief interpreters of communism to the Jewish people, has described the Soviet Union as the “saviour of the Jewish people.” The record, however, demolishes this propaganda line as a collection of half-truths, exaggerations, and outright deceptions.

At best, Soviet tolerance toward Jewish culture was never anything more than a temporary political tactic. And even then the Soviet claims were contemporaneous with the 1917 revolution, when the communists were seeking support from all quarters. Stalin’s _Marxism and the National Question_, the acknowledged communist classic on the subject, though consisting of 222 pages, contains only twenty pages written after 1927, with the most important single part having been written in 1913. By the late 1930’s alleged concessions to the cultures of the various minority groups gave way to a policy of forcible denationalization rivaling the brutal “Russification” tactics of the Czars.

To illustrate: In 1917 there were a total of forty-nine Yiddish or Hebrew newspapers in the Soviet Union. By 1921 these had increased to sixty-two; but no less than fifty were communist-controlled, while the forty-nine not under communist control in 1917 had dwindled to twelve in 1921.

Jewish literature suffered a similar fate. From 1928 to 1933 books published in Yiddish rose from 238 to 668, but there was a marked decline in books dealing with Jewish history and tradition. In 1932 there were thirty-six books in Yiddish classified as history—of these, sixteen were memoirs chiefly of old Bolsheviks; six were studies on the Communist International; six dealt with the revolution and history of the Communist Party; five consisted of speeches of Stalin and other communist leaders; and only three actually dealt with matters pertaining to Jewish culture. These related to the labor movement and were an attempt to rewrite history to conform with Marxist-Leninist doctrine.

The Soviet purge trials of 1936-37 should have made clear to the world the communist objective mercilessly to crush the leadership of any minority groups whose cultural resurgence conflicted with the advance of Marxism-Leninism. To cite an example: of the ten representatives of minority groups who served on the draft committee for the 1936 Soviet constitution, only one was alive at the end of 1937. The other nine were branded as “spies,” “enemies of the people,” and were shot, committed suicide, or had disappeared.

The sad fate of the Jewish school system in the Ukraine proves the lie to the Soviet propaganda claim of furthering Jewish culture. In 1925, government reports reflected a total of 39,474 students in the Ukrainian schools where Yiddish was the language of instruction. In 1931 the number of such students reached its peak of 90,000. By 1940 this figure had declined to 50,000, and the Jewish schools were completely suppressed when the Nazis took over the Ukraine in World War II. Since the war the efforts of Jewish educators to have the Soviet government construct new schools have apparently failed.

One of the most crippling communist attacks on Jewish culture has been prohibition of the use of Hebrew, the traditional language of Judaism. As a tactic the Soviets launched a program of “compulsory Yiddishizing” to destroy the influence of Hebrew among Russian Jews. Yiddish is a jargon based on a German dialect. It is unrelated to Hebrew. Many Jews, particularly Asiatic and Mediterranean Jews, do not know it at all. A similar program of suppression of Jewish institutions shifted to the satellites after World War II, where Jewish schools were abolished, Jewish organizations banned, and even athletic clubs bearing Jewish names were forced to change their names on twenty-four-hour notice.

The second propaganda claim of the Soviets in establishing the Jewish homeland of Birobidzhan should be closely analyzed. Solomon M. Schwarz, in his exhaustive study, _The Jews in the Soviet Union_, exposes the Soviet propaganda for the falsehood that it is. The so-called Jewish homeland was set up at a time when the threat of Japanese and Chinese invasion of the U.S.S.R.’s Far Eastern frontier was not idle. Thus, the Jewish homeland was conceived as a means of populating the vast spaces in the Far East of Russia, and also provided a convenient place to settle Jews not wanted in other parts of Russia.

By 1933 the Soviets envisioned a population of 60,000 Jews in Birobidzhan. During its first six years 19,635 Jews arrived, while 11,450 left, leaving a net gain of only 8185. By 1939, after eleven years, the Soviet Jewish homeland could claim no more than 30,000 Jews and by 1951 around 40,000 which was a small community surrounded by Asiatic peoples completely separated from the mainstream of Jewish life. Furthermore, it is in the maritime provinces of Siberia, where the climate is unsuitable for those accustomed to European life.

The third communist propaganda claim, that of rescuing Jews from Nazi extinction, is also a deception. In the first place, for two years prior to the Nazi invasion of Russia, when Moscow was allied with Berlin, _there is no record of any Soviet protest against the Nazi slaughter of Jews_, so far as is known. The good-neighbor policy between the communists and the Nazis, initiated by the Stalin-Hitler pact, is clearly established by the following report sent by the German Ambassador to Moscow to the German Foreign Office, where it came to light after the war: “... The Soviet Government is doing everything to change the attitude of the population here toward Germany. The press is as though it had been transformed....”

Later the Foreign Office was advised that:

... the Soviet Government has always previously been able in a masterly fashion to influence the attitude of the population in the direction which it has desired, and it is not being sparing this time either of the necessary propaganda.

Then, too, the silence of the Soviet leaders on the outbreaks of Nazi anti-Semitism completely misled Eastern European Jews as to the real character of the Nazi threat and hence, some 2,000,000 Russian and Eastern European Jews made no attempt to escape the Nazis during the early months of the German invasion of Russia. And even after the Nazi onslaught, there was a shocking failure on the part of the Soviets to reveal Nazi atrocities against the Jews.

For example, the Soviet government in 1942 condemned the “bloodthirsty, criminal plans of the fascists” aimed at exterminating Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and “other peoples” of the Soviet Union, with no direct reference to the Jews. As late as 1945 the Soviets in a report on the German concentration camp at Auschwitz (Oswiecim), where more than 4,000,000 persons were exterminated, did not even use the word “Jew,” although they constituted the majority of those whose lives were so brutally taken.

Not only did the communists in the Soviet Union fail to make any special effort to save Jewish people during the war, they showed no concern over their fate.

If further evidence is necessary to prove the falsity of communist propaganda directed toward the Jewish people, it is only necessary to look at the communist campaigns against Zionism. The communist propagandist, Paul Novick, reflected the communist line both in the Soviet Union and the United States when he wrote:

Ever since its inception Zionism has been an instrument of the Jewish bourgeoisie to hamper the struggle of the Jewish masses ... a means of diverting the attention of the Jewish workers from the class struggle and of keeping them separated from the progressive forces of other nationalities....

In the Soviet Union, Zionism is ruthlessly suppressed. In the United States communists have a more complex problem and avoid direct public attacks on the Zionist movement, so as not to alienate that large section of Jewish people who favor Zionism. The communist attacks are more subtle and are directed essentially at individual Zionist leaders. The aim, of course, is to discredit the Zionist movement without antagonizing its rank-and-file members. The Party line changes from time to time when it is expedient, but the communist objective of eventually destroying Zionist influence among the Jewish people, without alienating its rank-and-file members, has never changed.

Khrushchev more recently reiterated the Party line against the Zionist movement when he was asked what the Soviet Union would do if the Zionists settled in Soviet territory and demanded a state of their own. He replied with communist contempt, “We have thrown them out of our country.”

Communist Party leaders in the United States exhibited some concern over the Soviet campaign against Jews which was brought to light by an anti-Zionist article in _Pravda_ on September 21, 1948, by Ilya Ehrenburg, which referred to the state of Israel as a “bourgeois country.” This article declared that in Russia there was no artificial division between Jews and their Russian comrades but that Jews led lives in common with other peoples of Russia. The proper solution to the “Jewish problem,” according to Ehrenburg’s article, is the abolishment of “nationalism” among Jews and the integration of Jews into the existing society rather than their having a distinct life apart from other people.

It is known that when the information in the Ehrenburg article reached the United States, there were considerable concern and confusion in the offices of the _Morning Freiheit_ as to whether the article represented a fixed Soviet policy. The fact that _Pravda_ is under Soviet Communist Party control causes Party leaders in this country to give careful consideration to anything it publishes. The matter was resolved by directing an inquiry to Itzik Feffer, a friend of Stalin in Moscow, to secure the correct Soviet line on the Jewish question. The report came back to the United States that Ehrenburg merely was reflecting his own ideas, along with some of the younger communists of Jewish origin, and did not represent the correct policy of the Soviet Union. The then foreign editor of the _Morning Freiheit_, Moise Katz, in an article appearing in the January, 1949, issue of _Yiddishe Kultur_ criticized the ideas appearing in the Ehrenburg article.

Events, however, were to prove the correctness of Ehrenburg’s statements, which became the fixed policy of the Soviet Union, and the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, of which Itzik Feffer was a member, was abolished. In the meantime the National Committee of the Communist Party intervened and, according to reports, straightened out the _Morning Freiheit_ on the new Soviet line. A letter of apology over the signature of Moise Katz then appeared in the _Freiheit_ on March 29, 1949. This incident was discussed in communist circles and the word leaked out that three writers were discharged from the _Freiheit_ for “bourgeois nationalism.”

When Khrushchev denounced Stalin at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow in February, 1956, news of the long-pent-up acts of oppression against Jews in the Soviet Union began to leak out. It is, of course, significant that Khrushchev made no mention of the mistreatment of the Jews in his exposure of Stalin, whom he had so loyally served over the years.

Within a few weeks, as noted in