The Anglo-Jewish Association, reacting to reports of Soviet plans to resettle a large number of Soviet Jews in Biro-Bidjan, urged the Soviet Government today against undertaking “transfers of population, direct or indirect, of Jews or others.”
The strongly-worded memorandum, which was conveyed to Jacob Malik, the Soviet Ambassador in London, contained a specific plea that “Jewish citizens” of the Soviet Union” not be forced by open or disguised pressure to leave their present homes and that, above all. only such proposals be entertained for the future of Soviet Jewry as are entirely compatible with the exercise of free choice by the individual.”
The memorandum stressed that recent reports of such Soviet plans “have not been refuted by any responsible Soviet source.” Recalling the failure of the original “autonomous Jewish region,” the memorandum warned that the basic obstacle to such a resettlement was” the inherent artificiality of the idea of settling an urban European element in a primitive Asian area, adjacent to the Chinese border, to which no historic, sociological and spiritual ties bind them.”
The association cited the repeated purges carried out among the Jewish leaders of Biro-Bidjan., the suppression of Jewish cultural life there and the fact that at present Jews constituted only one-fifth of the region’s population. These facts, the Association declared, prompted fears that a new resettlement “would have to be carried out only by means of overt or covert compulsion.”
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.
