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Anti -Semitic Overtones in
Ladejinsky Case Repudiated
By Agriculture Secretary
Direct JTA Teletype Wire to The Jewish News
WASHINGTON—Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson on Tuesday received a delegation representing the American Jew-
ish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith to whom he expressed regret over the fact that his executive assist-
ant, Milan D. Smith, released an anti-Semitic letter in connection with the dismissal of Wolf Ladejinsky from his post of agricultural
economist for the U. S. Government.
The Secretary emphasized that anti-Semitism is abhorrent to him and that he repudiated the anti-Jewish implications in the
letter which was written by a White Russian emigre, George N. Vitt, who impugned the loyalty of American Jews of Russian origin.
Present at the meeting Tuesday was Mr. Smith, who denied that he had endorsed the anti-Semitic letter he released to the press.
The Jewish delegation was headed by Henry Edward Schultz, national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League, and Mur-
Gurfein,
member of the administrative committee of the American Jewish Commitee. It also included Benjamin R. Epstein, na-
ray
tional director of the ADL; Herman Edelsberg, ADL Washington representative; Edwin J. Lucas, director of national affairs of the
American Jewish Committee, and Nathaniel H. Goodrich, AJC Washington counsel.
Following their talks with Secretary Benson, Mr. Schultz and Mr. Gurfein issued the following statement:
"We came to see the Secretary of Agriculture at his invitation to discuss with him the Ladejinsky matter. We expressed our
'deep concern that the unfortunate release of the Vitt letter had raised questions in people's minds about the injection of religious pre-
judice in the determination of Ladejinsky's status.
"The Secretary stated that the religious question played no part in that decision.
Milk-Producers: With the aid of investment
capital derived from the sale of Israel Development Bonds, Is-
real is importing 1,000 milk-producing goats from Holland
and Belgium. Shown above is the first shipment of 100 goats,
which arrived in Israel recently aboard a specially outfitted
El Al C-47 airplane. The goats, each of which gives an aver-
age of 250 gallons of milk annually, are destined for Israel's
bill settlements, where cows do not thrive. Imported pri-
marily to improve the local breed, the goats are arriving in
Israel at the rate of 100 a week.
Aid Israel's Science: LOU I S L1PSKY
dean of American Zionists, flanked by Prof. SOL SPIEGEL-
MAN, Chicago, (left) and Prof, HERBERT MORAWETZ,
Brooklyn, (right) winners of the Lipsky Exchange Fellow-
ship. The American scientists will be working with Israeli
scientists, men. and women, at the Weizmann Institute of
Science at Rehovoth,
He regretted the release of the Vitt letter and repudiated its anti-Semitic implications.
He stated that anti-Semitism is abhorrent to him, that he would never countenance it
in his department. We urged Secretary Benson, in view of all the circumstances, to
reopen and reconsider the whole case, as the Navy did in the Chasanow matter."
White House Press Secretary James Haggerty was asked Tuesday if the Lade-
jinsky case was now before President Eisenhower. He declined to answer, but did
say that Secretary Benson had discussed it with Sherman Adams, the President's as-
sistant. It is understood that Mr. Benson m ade no commitment to the Jewish delega-
tion as to whether he would re-open the Ladejinsky case.
Joseph Barr, national commander of the Jewish War Veterans, who had announced
earlier that he would discuss with President Eisenhower anti-Semitic overtones of the
Ladejinsky case, was received Tuesday by the President but declared later that he had
not had an opportunity to discuss the Ladejinsky affair with him. The subject of dis-
cussion - at the meeting was the program before Congress this session.
The Ladejinsky case, which has been rocking Washington for several weeks, sud-
denly assumed anti-Semitic overtones when the letter bitterly attacking the agronom-
ist in anti-Semitic terms was made public by Smith.
Irving M. Engel, president of the American Jewish Committee, called for urgent
action in the Ladejinsky case. In a letter to Secretary Benson, Mr. Engel "deplored"
Mr. Smith's, release of the Vitt letter as "a regrettable and harmful incident."
Support of Mr. Ladejinsky came from many sides. Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles has pledged that if the Agriculture Department does not take the agro-
nomist back, the State Department will find a place for him. Rep. Walter IL Judd
of Minnesota has supported Mr. Ladejinsky as did the Washington Post, in an edi-
torial.
The Ladejinsky case became public two weeks ago when the Agriculture Depart-
ment announced he was being dismissed. Mr. Ladejinsky has been on the State Depart-
ment payroll for years and had received his latest State Department clearance only
last April. As agricultural attache at the United States Embassy in Tokyo, he was con-
sidered one of the leading agricultural economists in the Far East. He had inaugu-
rated many significant land reforms in Japan.
The Department of Agriculture defended its ouster by pointing out that Lade-
jinsky had worked as an interpreter for Amtorg, the Soviet trading organization, in
1931. It discounted anti-Communist articles he had written in 1944 and 1945, assert-
ing that Mr. Ladejinsky's father and three sisters were alive in Russia at the time
those articles appeared, and hinted he might have made a deal with the Russians
leading him "to believe his family would not be harmed."
Releasing the Vitt letter, Mr. Smith told newsmen that it was a "classic." The
letter said, in part:
"Regrettably . . . all through the last 65 years or so there was a sprinkling of Rus-
sian revolutionaries of various persuasions coming into the U.S.A. for asylum . .
Equally regrettable was the fact that a goodly share of these revolutionaries were
found among the Russian Jews . .. Russian Jews who came here running from the
Tsarist regime may have had reason to be revolutionaries, with Jewish persecutions
then going on in Russia.
"However, Jews who turned into Reds or fellow-travelers after 1919 were the
worst kind of traitors, not only to their new mother country, the U.S.A., but to their
own people, because Stalin's persecution of Jews in Russia really was a persecution,
which the previous Imperial Government never matched even to a small extent. The
Rosenbergs, the atom spies, are a good example . . . Mr. L. may be innocent 100 per
cent but facts from his past speak against him. Thus, for the sake of Uncle Sam, he
must go."
Mr. Ladejinsky referred to the Vitt letter as the type of "vicious, anti-Semitic,
Fascist brand of writing usually associated with crackpots." Mr. Smith denied he had
called the Vitt letter a "classic" defense of the Agriculture Department's position, but
said he made it public to show the views of one man who had had experience with
Amtorg. Vitt had written that "from my own experience with Amtorg, their interpretors
were among their key people; the reliability from the Soviet side had to be 100 percent."
Mr. Vitt asserted he was "not a Jew baiter" and said "some of my best friends are
among Jews.,"