This page needs to be proofread.
ever expect to be * * * But I have a firm conviction that this thing is Yiddish, and that one of its bases is found in the East Side of New York.’
- “Senator Nelson—‘Trotsky came over from New York during that summer, did he not?’
- “Dr. Simons—‘He did.’
- “Later Dr. Simons said: ‘In December, 1918 * * * under the presidency of a man known as Apfelbaum * * * out of 388 members, only 16 happened to be real Russians, and all the rest Jews, with the exception possibly of one man, who is a Negro from America, who calls himself Professor Gordon * * * and 265 of this northern commune government that is sitting in the Old Smolny Institute came from the lower East Side of New York—265 of them. * * *
- “‘I might mention this, that when the Bolsheviki came into power, all over Petrograd we at once had a predominance of Yiddish proclamations, big posters, and everything in Yiddish. It became very evident that now that was to be one of the great languages of Russia; and the real Russians, of course, did not take very kindly to it.’”
William Chapin Huntington, who was commercial attache of the United States Embassy at Petrograd, testified:
- “The leaders of the movement, I should say, are about two-thirds Russian Jews * * * The Bolsheviks are internationalists, and they were not interested in the particular national ideals of Russia.”
William W. Welch, an employee of the National City Bank, New York, testified:
- “In Russia it is well known that three-fourths of the Bolshevik leaders are Jewish * * * There were some—not many, but there were some—real Russians; and what I mean by real Russians is Russian-born, and not Russian Jews.”
Roger E. Simmons, Trade Commissioner connected with the United States Department of Commerce, also testified. An important anonymous witness, whom the committee permitted to withhold his name, told the same things.
