The Washington times., 1935-04-23
AMERICAN HELP
. FAILS To AID
RUSSIANS
Continued from Page y


States, I knew that the Jews OF
this country were aroused by
numerous reports of a system OF
extortion and torture practiced
by the GPU on relatives Of Ameri-
can immigrants.
The latter, replying to appeals
for help from their starving klns-
men in Russia, sent them small
money orders. The famine had
Impoverished the Soviet state
treasury.
The Golfers of the GPU were
empty. The GPU then launched
an organized campaign to extort
the American dollars as a source
of government revenue.
This dollar inquiSition" caused
the American Jewish Congress, LED
by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, to
call meetings of protest.
I talked with a number Of vic
Tins who had emerged from the
dollar inquisition." A woman IN
Kiev, the mother Of several chill
dren, gave me an account OF her
ordeal. She had been denounced
as having hidden some dollars re-
ceived from a relative in the
United States, and was arrested
in the middle of the night.
In the prison of the GPU, where
she was brought, were about 200
similar victims. Many OF them
were tearing their hair, crying and
protesting that they had no dol
lars.
The woman had none, but her
pleading was in vain, too. The
entire party of prisoners was then
subjected to the favorite method
of GPU torture.
Armed guards drove the prison
ers at a lively pace along the
corridor, back and forth. This
went on for hours. People began
ito fall, but were prodded and
kicked to make them rise. At the
end of three hours, some of the
victims collapsed and nothing
could make them get up. The
officials stood by and gave cruel
orders, often hooking the victims.
Torture Goes On
The torture continued. Same
tainted. Others became hysterlcal.
ssThose that had passed out were
sdragged away by their heads.
Finally, no more than go prison
ers were left on their feet.
OF these, more than 40 were
women.
The shadow Of the dollar in
uuisition" was everywhere. Other
facts I gathered showed that this
Soviet hunger for dollars was in
timately related to the hunger for
bread which had brought destltu-
ton to the land.
But where did the hunger for
bread spring?
Behind the appalling scenes OF
the famine that I had witnessed
stretched a second shadow Of the
Russian tragedy.
Hundreds of villages, without
leadership, were offering resist
ance to the Stain system of col
lectivization which forced them to
turn their homes, cattle, fields,
and implements into government
operated enterprises. The peas
ants who had made the revolu-
ton in order to gain the land
now found themselves deprived Of
their gains.
Dream Has Vanished
Millions resisted passively while
others resorted to sabotage. Be-
meath the cloak of the famine a
grim and silent war was being
waged. 1t was waged with arson,
with theft, with crafty means of
vengeance.
Peasants Joined collective farms
in order to wreck them from
within. They destroyed their live
stock, neglected their fields, and
stubbornly marched to death. It
I was a war for bread, perhaps the
most gruesome war that has ever
been fought.
The shadow of that war reached
as far as Moscow, where it smoth.
cred the last sparks of the hopes
that had been placed in the revo-
luton.
It was as if the strings of mu-
steal instrument had snapped in
the midst of a melody.
Instead of a heroic vision, there
was before all of us the martyr.
dom of a great people in captivity.
A government which had claimed
to be the only true champion of
labor became the greatest strike
breaking force in the world and
filled it's prisons with toilers.
Work in the U. S.
The third shadow of the famine
reached as far as America. It is
still in our midst. While the Sow.
let propaganda machine would
have the American people believe
that the Russian people are happy,
another arm of the Soviet govern
ment gathers and Solicits Ameri-
can dollars for victims of hunger
in Russia.
Every year hundreds of thou
sands of immigrants in this coun-
try send to their relatives in Rus
STA food parcels and money orders
through the TorgSin. The adver-
tisements of the Torgsin appear in
our press.
LSaw the Russian famine face
to face. But what better evidence
of the starvation of millions in
Russia can be secured than the
three and five-dollar remittanceS
which continue to flow from our
e. D.