Mr. ROMERSTEIN. Perhaps it would be best if I gave some background on the development of the party during its early days, which has some relationship to this.

As the chairman pointed out in his opening statement, the Communist Party, USA had been a member of the Communist International from the time of its foundation in 1919 until an alleged leaving of the International in 1940. I say "alleged" because there was information that the CPUSA didn't leave in 1940; it still maintained a relationship with the International Communist movement that lasts up to this date. The Communist Party, USA was formed as a split-off of the Socialist Party of the United States. There were actually two separate split-offs, one that consisted primarily of nationality sections of the party, the nationality federations they were called, of the Socialist Party; the other of American-born Socialists.

The first group constituted itself as the Communist Party of America. The second group as the Communist Labor Party. Both were formed in 1919. Both applied for membership in the Communist International.

The early documents of the party show that a Communist International representative was sent to this country with the demand that the two parties merge. They did so in 1920 but a faction of the Communist Party of America remained independent and didn't merge with them until the next year.

In 1920 they functioned as the United Communist Party of America. But at this point they were underground. In 1921 they decided to maintain the underground party but also to organize an above ground party which they called the Workers Party of America.

At this time the Jewish federation of the Socialist Party elected to leave the Socialist Party and join with the Communists. This was a relatively small group of people. Out of probably 12,000 or 13,000 Communists at that time, this Jewish federation had something in the neighborhood of 1,000 members. They were the largest group of Jews in the party and because they were a nationality federation, they were very much nationality oriented. For one thing many couldn't speak English. But this was true of the party membership generally. I have here a document of the Communist Party, USA, under the name Workers Party of America. In 1923 when the party came up from underground it combined both names, Workers (Communist) Party of America.

This document gives the membership statistics for the years 1922, 1923, 1924, and 1925, which I think are of significance in connection with what we are discussing.

On page 27 of this document which I would ask be made exhibit No. 5-and I will pass it up in a few moments if I may-the number of English speaking members in a Communist Party of 12,000 members averaged 1,269 during the year 1922.

The average number speaking the Jewish language was 975. The largest single group was the Finnish group who did not speak English; they spoke only Finnish. They had an average membership of 5,846. The Russian group had a membership of 379.

I point this out to indicate that the early Communist Party was a party of immigrants, many of whom had not been assimilated into American society at all.

One of the first things the party did was to set up foreign language newspapers to service these immigrants and get new immigrants into the party.

The CHAIRMAN. You are talking about a period from 1919 until when?

Mr. ROMERSTEIN. From 1919 until about 1930, the party was primarily immigrants. In 1921, the Jewish federation of the Socialist Party with under a thousand members moved into the Communist Party. One of the first things done was the establishment of a Yiddish newspaper, the Morning Freiheit. This newspaper still exists and remains an organ of the Communist Party.

It is extremely significant today as part of the struggle within the Communist Party of some members to publicly oppose the Soviet Union, and to have a right in the party to criticize the Soviet Union. That right is denied, and the Communist Party consistently remains a supporter of every Soviet position and cannot allow its members to criticize any Soviet position even when they disagree with it.

I would like to ask that the title page and pages 27-37 of this document be marked as exhibit No. 5. This is a pamphlet entitled "The 4th National Convention of the Workers (Communist) Party of America."

[The pages from the booklet, "The 4th National Convention of the Workers (Communist) Party of America," were marked exhibit No. 5 and are reproduced in app. I, pp. 1891-1902.]

Mr. ROMERSTEIN. May I interrupt my own testimony and point out that what I am going to be testifying to here is from documentary material and from my own studies. But I would like at this point to respond with some personal opinions as to what Mr. Shifrin said earlier in answer to Mr. Burke.

Mr. Shifrin is a Soviet Jew and a Zionist. I am a Jewish American, and I am not a Zionist. American Jews feel strongly about Soviet antiSemitism. Most American Jews would like to see that Soviet Jews have the right to emigrate to any place they wish. If Israel is a place that can take them, fine. If another country can take them, that is also fine.

There is a tendency in Soviet anti-Semitic literature and antiSemitic literature generally to use the term Zionist for all Jews. Most Jews are not Zionists. Only 10 percent of the American Jews are affiliated with Zionist organizations. Most Jews in America would like to see their people in Communist countries have permission to leave. I would like to see a situation where there was a free democratic Russia that would give Jews the same opportunities they have in the United States, including the opportunity to leave or stay. At that time if the Jews wanted to leave and live in a new country, fine. If they wanted to stay, fine.

Mr. BURKE. I don't quite understand what Mr. Shifrin was talking about when he separated his conversation with his being a Zionist and talking of the Jews of the Soviet Union.

I am well aware of what you just said and I know that there are many Zionists in this country and many Jews that are not Zionists. I am aware of that but I couldn't quite follow what he was driving at in this connection when he continually talked of being a Zionist as though it was different from the other Jews in the U.S.S.R.

From what he subsequently said, I think the opinion I got was not correct. He was saying some Jews wanted to go but they were afraid.

The CHAIRMAN. The Zionist organization was actually set up for the purpose of helping in the reestablishment of the nation of Israel, was it not?

Mr. ROMERSTEIN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Does a Zionist have to want to return to Israel?

Mr. ROMERSTEIN. There is disagreement among Zionists in the United States on just that question. Some feel that they should, if they are true to their beliefs, go live in Israel. Many others feel you can be a Zionist and live in another country.

Most American Jews are not Zionists but are sympathetic to the State of Israel because their co-religionists live over there. They want the Soviet Union to free its Jews. They also agree with the policy of the United States to guarantee the existence of Israel. There is now a campaign to allow Soviet Jews to go to Israel. I don't agree with some aspects of the campaign; I think Soviet Jews should have the right to go to any country that wishes to take them in if they wish to go. If another country felt they could afford to take in a number of Soviet Jews-in many cases these people have some training in various fields I would be very pleased to see countries take them in, not just Israel. But since Israel wants them and, if they want to leave the Soviet Union, I am in favor of their going.

The CHAIRMAN. From what I have heard from other sources, Israel would probably have difficulty in absorbing and assimilating a large number of Jewish Russians or Russian Jews into Israel because of the difficulty in adapting to the Israeli pattern of living.

Mr. ROMERSTEIN. Yes, sir, and also

The CHAIRMAN. The economic conditions in that country.

Mr. ROMERSTEIN. Also for another reason, which goes to the question of why I am not a Zionist. This is my personal opinion. I believe the Israeli Government is not geared to taking care of the people it has there now if it did not have substantial financial support from Jews in other countries.

I am sure that if they did absorb substantial numbers of Soviet Jews it would be necessary to raise a great deal of money from American Jews to make sure they did not starve.

The Israeli economy is in part a socialist economy. The socialist sector is not a viable economy and must have outside help. As a refuge for people who are persecuted, it serves a useful purpose. But to believe all Jews should go there I think is ridiculous.

As the joke goes, who would buy the Israeli bonds if all Jews went to Israel? This is a great part of the reason most American Jews and the people you meet, Congressman Burke, feel this way. They do not themselves wish to live there. It is not a country in which they would like to live.

Jews like to visit Israel; it is an interesting place. It has great historical interest to Jews and great religious interest.

I think most Jews living in a free country would not like to live in Israel. This has been true on the part of American Jews. Only a handful have gone there.

If I may return to where we were. Mr. White asked the position of the CPUSA, at that time called the Workers Party of America or the Workers (Communist) Party of America, on the Jewish question during the 1920's and up to the early 1930's. It paralleled exactly the Soviet position.

Soviet propaganda did have important elements of antisemitism but they were also conducting campaigns in a number of areas. There was a Soviet campaign-as Mr. Shifrin said-against the Zionists. The American Communists were also opposed to Zionists. The American Communists conducted a campaign against religion generally and Jewish religion particularly. This was identical with Soviet policy.

A booklet published by the Communist Party, USA in 1934 called "Religion in the USSR," by E. Yaroslavsky, a Soviet Communist, is a viciously antireligious tract and is the kind of thing that is offensive to people who are believers in their own religion.

It says on pages 36–37:

The Catholic Church, with the pope in its van, is now an important bulwark of all counter-revolutionary organizations and forces. *

But the Catholic Church does not stand alone. Every other ecclesiastical organization-Lutheran, Anglican, Jewish, Buddhist, Mohammedan and others, likewise helps the capitalists and landowners of its country to exploit and stupefy the masses

An antireligious campaign was conducted by the American Communists parallel to that of the Soviet Communists.

May we mark the title page of this pamphlet exhibit No. 6?

[The title page was marked exhibit No. 6 and is reproduced in app. I, p. 1903.]

Mr. ROMERSTEIN. In addition, Jews were persecuted in Russia because they were members of non-Communist parties. During the period of czarist autocracy there developed in Russia a variety of political parties trying to overthrow the regime. This included socialist parties, democratic parties and agrarian parties and so on.

They were persecuted by the czarist regime. But, they did not know what persecution meant until the Communists took power. At the time, the Russian Socialists were called Mensheviks. The Russian Socialist Party leader, Raphael Abramovich, came to the United States to appeal for help to the persecuted Socialists of Soviet Russia. This was in 1925.

The Communists here conducted a major campaign against Abramovich. They continued the hate campaign against him when he came to live in America. The campaign was conducted in 1925 against Abramovich by disruption of his meetings. Eventually they were to pay him back for his exposure of Soviet conditions; his son was murdered in Spain by the Soviet police during the Spanish Civil War.

In the document we marked exhibit No. 5, there is a reference to the specific responsibilities of the Jewish section of the Communist Party to conduct a campaign against Abramovich.

In 1928 the Communist International put forward the position of national liberation struggles and called upon the colonial people of the world to take up arms against the colonialists. In Palestine in 1929 and during the thirties, there were very, very severe anti-Jewish disturbances which included the killing of Jews by Arab terrorists. They did not need, frankly, the Communist suggestion that they do this, but the Communists supported them in the rioting.

A brochure published by the League for Labor Palestine, "The Communists and the Arab Problem," goes into detail-I won't read the whole thing-goes into the attacks on the Jews in Palestine and quotes documents from the American Communist Party supporting

the persecution of the Palestinian Jews. It makes the point that the American Communists, even those Jewish Communists, were repudiated by Jews because of their anti-Semitic activities.

May we mark that exhibit No. 7?

[The brochure was marked exhibit No. 7 and is reproduced in its entirety in app. I, pp. 1904-1919.]

Mr. ROMERSTEIN. With the rise of nazism in Germany, the Soviet Union began playing down the concept of national liberation struggles and the American Communists found it possible to again appeal to Jews. But, as late as 1938 a member of the Communist Party of the United States, J. Soltin, in a speech at a National Conference of Jewish Communists in December of 1938, stated:

But the attacks upon Jews in Palestine should not be confused with the pogroms upon Jews in Germany. While condemning the terrorist attacks on the Jews in Palestine we must not overlook the peculiar situation in that country where attacks upon the Jews are a by-product of the liberation movement. Arab patriots are fighting against the British mandate *

He went on to say,

*

To the extent that this struggle is a struggle of an oppressed colonial people for its liberation, it should meet with the sympathy of every liberty-loving person, particularly among the Jews who are themselves an oppressed people.

In other words, Jews should have been happy about the persecution of Jews in Palestine because it was part of the liberation struggle. May I ask that the cover page of this pamphlet be marked exhibit No. 8? This is an official Communist Party pamphlet.

[The cover of the pamphlet containing the Soltin speech was marked exhibit No. 8 and is retained in committee files. The pamphlet is titled, "The Struggle Against Anti-Semitism, a Program of Action for American Jewry."]

Mr. ROMERSTEIN. During this period more sensible Communists were suggesting that this hardline support of anti-Semitism was perhaps a mistake. In a report to the Tenth New York State Convention of the Communist Party, also held in 1938, Moissaye Olgin, who joined the party in 1921 as the leader of the Jewish Socialist federation and was editor of the Morning Freiheit, made a speech in which he apologized to the Jews.

He said:

We, in former years, managed to alienate the Jewish masses. More than that, we managed to convey an idea that the Communists are hostile to the Jewish national aspirations. We fought Zionism, which was correct: but in fighting Zionism, in some way or other, we forgot that many progressive elements of the Jewish people were Zionistically inclined. We forgot also that the craving, the desire, for nationhood is not in itself reactionary, although Zionism is reactionary. We fought Zionism, but identified its leaders with the mass of followers. We conveyed the impression that the Jewish people who live in Palestine are our enemies and we are theirs. It took us a long time to overcome these errors which alienated us from the broad Jewish masses.1 1

Olgin was right. The Jews were quite alienated by this kind of position. But with the rise of nazism in Germany and the supposed official position of the Communists that they were the leading antiNazis, they did attract a certain number of Jewish intellectuals, particularly young Jewish intellectuals.

1 Olgin,_report, "Mass Work Among National Groups," Proceedings of the 10th Convention, Communist Party of the State of New York, May 20-23, 1938, published by the N.Y. State Communist Party, pp. 279 and 280.