Communist infiltration of Hollywood motion-picture industry : hearing before the Committee on Un-American activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-second Congress, first session (1951)

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420 COMMUNISM IN MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY you don't know what the truth is, and it takes some shocking event to get you out of it. The Communists very effectively use these organizations, and they are primarily for the purpose of getting well-intentioned people in the organizations. You see, many Communist Party members, I would say the majority of members are not used in subversive activities. They are concerned with the organization and running of the Com- munist fronts and things of that kind, and many of them can go to their deaths believing they were working in a decent organization, if they don't look on the outside to see what is happening in Russia. It is the "end" policy of the Communist Party which explains every- thing. Whatever is done, they say, "This had to be done to achieve a good end." The end overtly is Utopia. For instance, many people questioned the Communist purges. The answer was, "These people are revolutionists. We must hold them back." The same thing is true of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the Finnish War. The Hitler-Stalin Pact was to achieve a good end. The Fin- nish War, they explained if they didn't have all that span between Finland and Leningrad, Leningrad would have been overrun. My wife had an interesting experience while I was in jail. My wife is not political at all, but she wanted me to get home very badly and was doing what she could, together with other wives of the "ten," to get me home. She was called and asked to go with one of the wives of the "ten" to Sacramento, where all three parties—Democratic, Republican, and Progressive—were holding conventions. My wife noticed that the wife, or the woman, she was with, and others she had made contact with up there, were doing things that she didn't think were quite proper. For instance, they were getting information. In one par- ticular instance they asked a small clerk, getting a small salary, to give them a secret list. My wife said, "You are asking him to risk his livelihood. He might lose his job and his reputation." The answer was, "It doesn't matter if one person gets hurt if thousands will even- tually benefit." That answer is a very corrupt thing. You cannot get a perfect end by using a corrupt means, because the corrupt means corrupts you so that you don't know what a perfect end is. Mr. Walter. How do the Communists explain the 18,000,000 slave laborers in Russia ? Mr. Dmytrtk. In this country they deny it. They say the capital- ist press does not print the truth, that they print only lies. I have had arguments on that. I have said I didn't believe all they printed were lies. They will admit some people are liquidated, but they say it is for the good of humanity. You can make people believe this very easily. Mr. Tavenner. You have described the general method used by the Communist Party in making its appeal to persons in Hollywood. I wish you would tell us now the circumstances of your own joining of the Communist Party, when it was and how it occurred. Mr. Dmytryk. I joined, as I said before, in 1944. Mr. Tavenner. Excuse me a moment. Prior to that time were you a member of various Communist-front organizations?