A solemn appeal to Soviet authorities to re-examine the situation of Soviet Jews and to grant them equal rights with other minority groups in Russia was issued here today by the one day conference on Soviet Jewry which brought together world-famous intellectuals from 14 countries. It was convened by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, who delivered one of the major addresses at the parley.
The resolution in which the appeal was made reiterated the sorrow expressed during the day by the various speakers. The resolution asked the Soviet Government to reestablish Jewish organizations, and cultural and religious institutions and to permit Soviet Jewry to contact Jewish religious centers in other countries and to develop their own cultural life in Russia.
“Urged by humanitarian considerations, we especially ask the Soviet Union to permit Jews living in the Soviet Union who have been separated from their families during the last war to rejoin them, ” the resolution emphasized. The resolution, which was couched in moderate tones, stressed that all appeals in it were based strictly on humanitarian grounds without any political implications.
Dr. Goldmann, who presented in his address a list of religious and national discriminations against Jews in the Soviet Union, paid a warm tribute to the Soviet Union for its role in World War II and for having outlawed anti-Semitism. He said that, in spite of that action, the Jewish community in Russia was being” collectively discriminated against from both the religious and national angle. “
DR. GOLDMANN CITES LIST OF DISCRIMINATIONS AGAINST SOVIET JEWS
“A special policy, different from that applied to all other minorities, is applied to Soviet Jews, ” Dr. Goldmann said. “This policy, if not modified, can in the long run bring about the forced disintegration of the community and even its disappearance as such.”
The Jewish leader cited at length official Soviet publications to demonstrate that the Soviet Government’s attitude toward Soviet Jews was contrary to its own laws. He contrasted the difficulties for Soviet Jewry with the advantages granted to Russia’s other minority groups. In the religious sphere, he compared the situation of the other religious groups, all of which have some form of organization and which keep in touch with co-religionists abroad, with the Jewish faith which he said was cut off from its brethren abroad and deprived of all central organizations within.
He also disclosed that the Jewish Prayer book published in 1957–the only edition in 40 years–consisted of only 3, 000 copies, “a ridiculously small number for a community of 2, 500, 000 which has been deprived of prayer books for so many years. ” He reported that the manufacture and Import of all Jewish ritual objects, such as mezuzahs and phylacteries, was forbidden in the Soviet Union,
In spite of many available manuscripts, he said, no Yiddish books whatever were printed in the Soviet Union in 1958. In 1959, he reported, three Yiddish books were printed in editions of 3, 000 each, the majority of which were exported. Only a few hundred were retained for sale in the Soviet Union.
The Jewish leader declared that the Biro-Bidjan Yiddish newspaper was not for sale in the Soviet Union and that even the Warsaw Communist paper, the Folkstimme, has been banned.
Contrasting these conditions with the more liberal attitude in other Communist countries and even with the attitude which prevailed in the Soviet Union in its early years when “Jews enjoyed equal rights with other minorities,” Dr. Goldmann said this was proof that “anti-Jewish discrimination is not an integral aspect of the Communist regime. “
Another equally tragic grievance, he stated, was the lack of cooperation shown by Soviet authorities in helping in the re-union of Jewish families to eliminate one of the most horrible aftermaths of the last war.
WORLD OPINION IS ASKED TO HELP ALLEVIATE PLIGHT OF SOVIET JEWRY
Summing up the situation, Dr. Goldmann said: “This is indeed a tragic picture. The Jews in Russia have neither the right nor the possibility to lead a Jewish life. They have no possibility to express their creative sentiments as Jews, no newspapers, no schools, no central organizations and no contacts with Jews abroad. Russia’s Jews cannot even protest–they can only wait, pray and hope,”
He appealed to the delegates to draw their own conclusions and expressed the hope that an enlightened world opinion would make its weight felt to help alleviate the plight of what was once the cultural and traditional source for world Jewry.
Daniel Mayer, chairman of the League for the Rights of Man, who presided, urged the conference to study the problem of Soviet Jewry in a “cold and dispassionate spirit. ” Professor Martin Buber, discussing the concept of the immortality of Judaism, expressed the hope that the Soviet Jewry would receive equal rights so as to develop its “fundamental cultural attributes.”
Other speakers were Dean James Pike of San Francisco and former French Minister Edouard Depreux who discussed the problem and urged the Soviet Union to give equal rights to Soviet Jewry.
Label A. Katz, president of the B’nai B’rith, said that “if the 2, 500, 000 Soviet Jews are not faced with annihilation, they are certainly threatened with cultural dehydration, ” He urged the conference participants to pass a resolution which would make the Soviet Union aware of the fact that “the eyes of the world are on it in this issue, ” He agreed that international politics must be kept out of the debate,
Wolf Mankiewiez, the young British Jewish writer, criticized the Soviet authorities and particularly the Soviet press for “calumnies and falsehoods” against the Jews, which he said were “reminiscent of those of the early Nazi era, ” Messages to the conference were received from Mrs, Eleanor Roosevelt, United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and former French Premier Pierre Mendes France.
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.
