While religious services were still allowed, the clergy was reduced to the status of second-class citizenship; a campaign of terror was launched leading to the arrest and imprisonment or execution of priests, rabbis, ministers, and other church leaders on such vague charges as “counter-revolutionary activity” or “crimes against the people.” Physical destruction of church property was conveniently explained as the “spontaneous” acts of “aroused” peasants and workers to conceal the real perpetrators, Soviet officialdom. The main target, of course, was the Orthodox Church, which had long been the state church of Russia; but all other faiths suffered, including that of the Jews. The reports of refugees as compiled by Wladyslaw Kania in the book, _Bolshevism and Religion_, published by the Polish Library in New York City in 1946, prove the hypocrisy of the Soviet claim of minority protection with accounts as follows: The Jews are morally persecuted, the young Jewish population is being brought up in un-religious ways.... * * * * * The Jews in Russia are living only on the memories of the happy past.... * * * * * ... during the Jewish feast Purim ... the Jews, Soviet citizens, assembled for evening prayer. One of the neighbors reported them to the NKVD. The premises were raided and the host arrested and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. * * * * * The rabbis have been deported; “kosher” meat, etc., though promised, does not exist.... The synagogues and houses of worship have been closed.... General Walter Bedell Smith, after his three years as Ambassador to the Soviet Union, reported that in June, 1948, about thirty churches were open in Moscow, which included one Jewish synagogue for an estimated 300,000 Jews. During World War II General Smith reported, “But two religions—the Jewish and the Roman Catholic—did not gain even temporary benefits from the wartime policy of greater religious tolerance; in fact, on balance, it is probably safe to say that attacks upon them have been stepped up rather than relaxed in recent years.” Communist reports on the state of Jews in the Soviet Union make little reference to Judaism as practiced. For example, the forty-seven-page communist propaganda pamphlet, written by Paul Novick and J. M. Budish, entitled _Jews in the Soviet Union_, makes only this single reference to Judaism: Then, there are Jewish religious activities. I visited the main synagogue in Moscow during Yom Kippur. It was over-crowded, with people outside listening to the cantor through loud speakers.... I visited synagogues in Kiev, Vilna, Berditchev, Zhytomir. There are about 300 organized religious communities in the U.S.S.R....