Subject of professor’s work turns out to be Russian spy JIM DAY The Guardian
A political science professor at UPEI was dumbfounded to learn that a subject of his own research was a Soviet agent who penetrated the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb.
“That surprised me as much as anybody else,’’ Henry Srebrnik said of revelations that George Koval likely helped speed up considerably the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop an atomic bomb of its own.
“He must have been one of the most important spies,’’ observed Srebrnik.
“He clearly knew what he was doing.’’
The professor learned of the connection just two weeks ago when he read a small article on President Vladimir Putin posthumously giving the highest Russian award — the Hero of Russia medal — to Koval, who died last year at 94.
New York Times writer William Broad, who quotes Srebrnik in a recent article on Koval, wrote that the brilliant physicist’s success as a spy hinged on an unusual family history of migration from Russia to Iowa and back. That gave him a strong commitment to Communism, a relaxed familiarity with American morality and no foreign accent.
Koval, writes Broad, was a mole groomed in the Soviet Union by the feared G.R.U., the military intelligence agency.
He gained wide access to America’s atomic plants, a feat unknown for any other Soviet spy.
Srebrnik, who has for many years been researching the Kovals for a project on American Jewish Communists, said the family belonged to a popular front organization, as did most American Jews who emigrated to Birobidzhan, a Siberian city that Stalin promoted as a secular Jewish homeland.
Srebrnik believes Koval likely didn’t feel he was doing any damage in his role
as a spy to help the Soviet Union build its own atomic bomb.
The Kovals belonged to an organization called ICOR, a Yiddish acronym for the Association for Jewish Colonization in the Soviet Union. George Koval’s father served its Sioux City branch as secretary, noted Srebrnik.
“They thought what they were doing was for the good of the world,” he told The Guardian.
“They were pro-Communist . . . the Soviet Union was their country, not the United States. That was their ideological homeland.”'
Srebrnik has just finished a book on the Canadian Jewish Communist movement that he hopes will be released in the spring.
He has published four
or five articles on the weightier subject of American
Jewish Communists and hopes to eventually compile a book.
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Randall Creamer from Lynn, MA writes: This is important work. The betrayal of the West and Christianity by un-Americanized Russian Jews is a taboo subject that echoes in foreign policy to this very day, especially in the Middle Eastern projects. I hope Professor Srebmik had fortitude. He is in a position to shed light in an area of great contention. These vile people are still amongst us and are very busy. Sir, be prepared to be called an anti-Semite for every word of truth you utter, for fact you uncover. Godspeed.
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Amazed from Ch'town, PEI writes: A quick search online says that Mr Creamer is in fact a real person. He is the senior minister of the First Church of Christ in Boston, MA. Business must be slow there at the First Church if he has time to scour the internet for places such as our local newspaper to spew his venom.
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DeJa Vu from Stratford, PE writes: I can't imagine what amazed from Ch'town finds wrong with Mr Creamer's comments , or why he finds the comments venomous. Is it because he states that Russian Jews were also sometimes Communist. Leon Trotsky the first head of the Red Army was a jew, so what . In regards to the comment vile people I hope he was referring to Communists, I don't think all the Communists in the world died when the Soviet Union broke up.
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Cyrus Eaton from Pugwash, NS writes: Uh huh.
Mr. Creamer, or Rev. Creamer, the witch hunting McCarthy era ended over half a century ago. You should spend more of your energies looking at conspiracies involving J. Edgar Hoover, Jimmie Hoffa or Elvis Presley.
It is clear from looking back at history that the only real threat to humanity was not the Soviet/communist conspiracy but the much vaunted United States of America - the only nation to ever use atomic warfare on the human race.... and the only nation to ever invade British North America/Canada.
As any informed citizen can see, the nascent Christian Right in the U.S.A. during the 1950s stirred the McCarthy-ites and beat the war drums that have echoed through to the present.
As your President Eisenhower and former Supreme Commander Allied Forces in Europe, warned so eloquently in his farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961....
''In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.''
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Amazed from Ch'town, PEI writes: Dejavu: did you read his entire post? I think you need to review the bit where he refers to jews as vile people who are very busy at some unnamed task - presumably a hateful and destructive one. Or maybe the part where the West and Christianity are being betrayed.
He's managed to fit a lot of pure bile into one short paragraph, and he certainly doesn't display the attitude of caring or brotherly love that you would expect from a man of the church.
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Deja Vu from Stratford, PE writes: Amazed from PEI, you might be right in thinking that Mr Creamer is centering out the Russian Jews of the past, and I believe he may be referring to the massive immigration of Russian Jews to Israel as a present threat. Whether he is right or wrong in his present beliefs, time will tell. I hope he isn't using forums ,such as this to spout anti-semitism. There is certainly no lack of evidence proving that the Soviet Union tried to subvert the West in the past,. The subversion of our values,and way of life was a major concern for all the Communist Dictators from Lenin until the Soviet Union finally imploded on itself. I know first hand of some of the subversive tactics that they used in Canada, so this isn't just reading history for me.As you can see from the post by the person who used a great Canadian's name the apologists for the Communist Party are still alive ,and well.
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Cyrus Eaton from Pugwash, NS writes: ''As you can see from the post by the person who used a great Canadian's name the apologists for the Communist Party are still alive ,and well.''
So anyone who is opposed to war and in favour of peace is a communist apologist?
So anyone who is opposed to any nation having or using nuclear weapons is a communist apologist?
So anyone who is opposed to the private sector defence industry enriching itself on the backs of humans suffering in war zones throughout the world is a communist apologist?
So anyone who thinks that wrapping a nation in nationalistic hogwash and bumper stickers stating ''support our troops (or you are a lesser citizen)'' is a communist apologist?
Gee, maybe we should have communists running our nation? :-)
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