Americans of all religions believing in religious freedom share Jewish hopes that Soviet Premier Khrushchev’s statement at the National Press Club on the role played by Soviet Jews in the launching of the first rocket to the moon “presages an end” to anti-Jewish discrimination in the Soviet Union, an editorial in the Washington Star says today.
“At the National Press Club the other day. Premier Khrushchev denied, in effect, that the Kremlin discriminates in any way against the 3,000,000 Jews of the USSR.” The editorial states: “In the Western world, however, leading co-religionists of these people have long had in their hands abundant documentary evidence, showing that Soviet policy has had a large measure of domestic anti-Semitism in it ever since the late 1940’s.
“This policy, according to the evidence, has consisted of numerous restrictions debarring Russia’s Jews from many facilities and activities, including particularly activities involving their culture and faith. Perhaps Mr. Khrushchev’s statement on the subject presages an end to such discrimination. That is the hope, at any rate, of world Jewry, and it is a hope shared by all peoples who believe in religious freedom,” the Washington Post said.
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.
