R.N. Carvalho, president of the Anglo-Jewish Association, charged last night that Soviet Russian leaders “seem to be adopting a policy that Russian Jews must be wholly Russian without any Jewish affiliations whatever.” He told a meeting of the Association’s Council, that “the Communist Government has had to accept the failure of its attempt to solve the Jewish problem by regarding Jews as simply another cultural community.”
He said that the enthusiastic reception given Israel delegates by Russian Jews this summer proved beyond doubt that the bulk of Russian Jews were still staunchly Jewish in interests and sympathies, and that they were anxious to establish once more the closest bonds with Jews outside the Soviet empire.
The British Jewish leader said that “brutal force” might in time enable the Soviet leaders to eliminate all Jewish aspects from the lives of Russian Jews “but not without resistance, if only passive, from Russian Jews who seem courageously determined to keep alive their Jewishness.”
Asserting that “unfortunately, Russia’s attitude toward its Jewish citizens is bound up with its anti-Israel policy and Middle East ambitions,” he appealed to the Western Powers to issue some kind of declaration guaranteeing immediate assistance to Israel if the Jewish State was attacked. He expressed the hope that such an eventuality was entirely “hypothetical,” adding that even if it happened “we can be sure of Israel’s ability to defend itself.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
