Zionist Congress Appeals to Soviet Government to Permit Emigration of Jews

The World Zionist Congress today adopted one by one a series of resolutions calling on the Soviet Union to open its doors to Jews seeking to emigrate to join in the upbuilding of Israel and urging the release of imprisoned Zionists in the U.S.S.R. “The right of emigration is the natural right of every Jew wherever he may be,” one of the resolutions emphasized.

The Congress plenary session also expressed its “concern and anxiety over the fate of Zionist prisoners in Rumania from whom no news has been received in over a year” and urged the Hungarian Government to permit emigration to Israel “as have other East European states such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.”

The resolution calling for the release of Zionist prisoners in the U.S.S.R. was prefaced by the following paragraph: “The Zionist Congress states with regret that even after the Government of the Soviet Union worked within the framework of the United Nations for the setting up of the State of Israel and recognized it when it was set up, it has not yet released Zionist prisoners in the Soviet Union whose hearts are in strengthening Zionism and the rise of Israel and who remain true to the culture of Israel and its spiritual values.”

When Adolf Berman, Mapam delegate and former leader of the left Poale Zion in Poland, charged that Revisionist delegates were using the Congress rostrum for incitement against the U.S.S.R., Dr. Nahum Goldmann, Congress president, took exception. He told Mr. Berman that the speeches and resolution on the floor of the Congress were concerned with Jewish emigration and Zionist prisoners, and nothing else.

“The Congress,” the resolution on emigration from Russia stated, “notes with deep regret the fact that until now, the Soviet Union has not removed its ban on Jewish emigration from its territory. The Congress resolves that it cannot accept the denial of the right of emigration of the Jewish community of the Soviet Union, one of the most important communities of the Jewish people and among the first to pioneer settlement in Eretz Israel to establish the foundations of the State of Israel and the second largest community remaining to the Jewish people after the terrible catastrophe of the second World War.” It called on the Government of the Soviet Union to “understand the vital needs and historic demands of the State of Israel and the Jewish people, and to allow Jewish emigration.”