Soviet Writers Asked to Protest Suppression of Jewish Culture in Russia

The Congress for Jewish Culture in New York, an international Yiddish cultural federation, today sent a cable to the Soviet Writers Assembly, meeting in Moscow, asking the writers in the Soviet Union to protest against the suppression of Jewish culture in Russia.

“Raise your voices against liquidation of leading Soviet Jewish writers, musicians, artists, cultural leaders–a crime perpetrated during the Stalin era–and which aroused world indignation,” the cable to the Soviet writers said.

“Rehabilitate all innocent victims both dead and living who, in that period, were deported to camps and incarcerated. Use moral influence as Soviet writers in demanding reestablishment of the Yiddish literature, press, Jewish cultural life in the Soviet Union and to get removal of present ban on Yiddish language–the language of the large masses of the Jewish people of the world–and to permit again the cultural use of Hebrew,” the cable concluded.