An article by council insider and Nationalist contributor ‘Frustrated’.
Previous posts in this series can be found here: Part One / Part Two / Part Three /
The Overman Committee.
On 11th February, 1919, a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings on the influence of Bolshevism in America. These hearings were chaired by North Carolina senator Lee Slater Overman and were the forerunner of the more famous House Un-American Activities Committee of the early 1950’s, that also investigated alleged disloyalty and communist subversion.
Many Americans were upset by the Bolshevik Revolution so on 11th February, 1919, the Overman Committee began to hear testimony from Americans who had witnessed this revolution in Russia. However, their testimony at the Overman hearings fuelled a ‘Red scare’ and antisemitic paranoia.
Reverend George A. Simons was superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Petrograd, (formerly St. Petersburg), from 1907 to late 1918. He gave his evidence on February 12th 1919.
Reverend Simons testified on recent events that he had witnessed in Petrograd. He stressed how hundreds of exiled Jewish Bolshevik agitators (following in the trail of Trotsky) had swarmed into Petrograd from the Lower East Side of New York, following the general amnesty issued by the Provisional Government after Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in March 1917.
Rev. Simons testified: “I was surprised to find scores of such men (New York Jews) walking up and down Nevsky. Some of them, when they learned that I was the American pastor in Petrograd, stepped up to me and seemed very much pleased that there was somebody who could speak English, and their broken English showed that they had not qualified as being real Americans; and a number of these men called on me, and a number of us were impressed with the strong Yiddish element in this thing right from the start, and it soon became evident that more than half of the agitators in the so-called Bolshevik movement were Yiddish”.
Simons also testified on events after the Bolshevik coup: “Shortly after the great revolution of the winter of 1917, there were scores of Jews standing on the benches and soap boxes, and what not, talking until their mouths frothed, and I often remarked to my sister, ‘Well, what are we coming to, anyway? This all looks so Yiddish.’ Up to that time we had very few Jews, because there was, as you may know, a restriction against having Jews in Petrograd, but after the revolution they swarmed in there, and most of the agitators happened to be Jews, I do not want to be unfair to them, but I usually know a Jew when I see one.”
Simons further testified that in late 1918, only 16 out of 388 members of the Soviet government then sitting in Petrograd were real ethnic Russians. All the rest were Jews and 265 of these Jewish members of the Soviet government had recently arrived from the Lower East Side of New York!
Rev. Simons concluded his testimony: “They were apostate Jews. I do not want to say anything against the Jews, as such, I am not in sympathy with the anti-Semitic movement, never have been, and do not ever expect to be. I am against it. I abhor all pogroms of whatever kind. 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…. I do not think the Bolshevik movement in Russia would have been a success if it had not been for the support it got from certain elements in New York, the so-called East Side.”
William Welsh arrived in Russia in late 1916 as an accountant with the National City Bank. He left Russia in late 1918. On February 14th 1919 he testified that: “I met most of the people that came into the bank, and met a great many of the Russians (i.e. Russian Jews) who came from New York to Russia, and in almost every instance they had been in this country (the USA) from 9 to 10 years, from the time of the first (failed) Russian revolution in 1905 until this second revolution.”
Minnesota Senator Knute Nelson asked Mr. William Welsh: “Did these Americans that came over to Russia – I mean these East Side (Jewish) fellows that came over, that you have described – actively enter the ranks of the Bolshevik crowd?” William Welsh relied to Senator Nelson: “Yes.”
The Overman Committee report is available to read online from Google Books in a first and second volume.
Credits:
Main Image: Three of the five members of the Overman Committee in 1919 during hearings: Senator Josiah Oliver Wolcott (D-Del.), Chairman Lee Slater Overman (D-N.C.), Senator Knute Nelson (R-Minn.). U.S. Senate Historical Office, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Lower Image: New York Times, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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