Communists Send Witnesses to Siberia

● The New York Times of March 5, 1957, published this news dispatch from London: “Seven members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect have been brought to trial in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic on charges of ‘spying for organizations in the United States,’ a radio report from Kishinev disclosed. Kishinev is the capital of the Moldavian Republic, which lies in the southwest part of the Soviet Union. According to the report, two of the seven defendants are women.” Beneath this report the Times commented: “Officials at the international headquarters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Brooklyn, N. Y., said they had not been informed of the arrest of the seven members of the sect. They said the sect operated underground throughout the Soviet Union and about 7,000 Witnesses already had been sent to Siberia.”