Evening star., 1953-01-14
The Red Doctors Plot

The latest sensation from behind the Iron
Curtain is the Kremlins announcement that
nine Russian medical doctors-most of them
JeWs-have been caught red-handed in mur-
derous plot instigated by American English
warmongers" in connivance with Zionist"
organizations. According to the announcement,
the nine have already confessed" that they
killed Andrei A.. Zhdanov and Alexander S.
Scherbakov as prelude to program aimed
at bringing about "the destruction of the lead
ing personnel of the Soviet Union" including
presumably even Josef Stain himself.
Zhdanov, who at the time was one of the
top planners of the cold war against the West
and key member of the all-poWerful Polit-
buro, died in 1948. Scherbakov, while serving
as chief of the political administration of the
Soviet Army, passed on to his reward even
earlier than that-in 1945. But now, long
years after their burial and despite the official
statements originally ascribing their deaths to
heart disease, the Kremlin has suddenly dis
covered that they succumbed not to natural
causes but to murder-murder committed by
the nine terrorist" doctors on instructions
from British and American intelligence services
and "the international Jewish bourgeois
nationalist organization Joint"
AS far as can be ascertained at the moment,
Joint" in the Soviet announcement refers to
the American Joint Distribution Committee,
Jewish agency that has spent millions of dollars
helping European Jews on both sides of the
Iron Curtain. AS the Kremlin tells the story, it
was through this agency-as well as through
Anglo-American intelligence channels-that the
accused physicians got word to carry out the
plot In the case of Zhdanov, they made an
incorrect diagnosis of his disease prescribed
a regime which was contra indicated and
thereby killed" him. Similarly, in the earlier
case of Scherbakov, they Incorrectly applied
strong medicines introduced an expert
mental regime and thus caused his death"
Beyond that according to the charges against
them, they had every intention of doing the same
to long list of other Soviet bigwigs beginning
particularly with top military commanders.
It may be assumed that the nine doctors
involved-each of them apparently very promi-
nent in Moscow-will soon be placed on trial"
It may be assumed, too, that they will go
through the customary Red routine of self
abasing public confession" prior to being shot
or sent to the gallows. Meanwhile since truth,
falSehood, fantasy and reality are all one in
the dark world behind the Iron Curtain, out
siders can do little more than shake their heads
in baff1en1ent over the unbelievable character
of this so-called plot-doubly unbelievable
because it has only just now been uncovered
and because the alleged culprits, in the years
that have passed since the Scherbakov-Zhdanov
deaths, seem to have made no move against any
of the others listed as their prospective victims.
Yet there is one thing clear about this
weird new tale from Russia. The charges made
in the tale-wholly apart from adding further
fuel to the ceaseless fire of the Kremlins hate
campaign against the West, especially against
America-have basic resemblance to those
first raised by the Communists at the recent
Czech trials. That is to say, they are strongly
anti-Zionist in tone-a fact suggesting that
Stain and his co-conspirators are becoming
openly anti-Semitic for sinister political and
other reasons. Small wonder if Jews within
the Red empire now feel terror all around
them.