A group of scholars, church leaders and literary figures have published a public appeal to the Soviet Union urging Soviet authorities “to reconsider their policies towards Soviet Jews so as to restore Justice for those sentenced and for the weak and defenseless minorities they represent.”
The statement, which was published in the Los Angeles Times, said that the recent trials of lay leaders of the Moscow and Leningrad Jewish communities “and the long prison terms to which they have been sentenced are cause of grave concern over renewed anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.”
“It is especially disturbing that on the very days when Stalin’s unspeakable actions were again denounced by Khrushchev, the Soviet Government saw fit to take steps apparently designed to stifle whatever little specifically Jewish life has survived there,” the statement declared. “Men of good will everywhere are shocked by official persecutions of any people. It is not enough for the Soviet Union to proclaim high principles of the equality of peoples. The world has a right to expect that it will also act on them.”
The signers were author Michael Blankfort; Rev. Charles Gasass, Chancellor of Loyola University; dramatist Norman Corwin, Novelist Aldous Huxley, Dr. Abbott Kaplan, Dean of the Extension program at the University of California in Los Angeles; Rev. Gerald Kennedy, Methodist Bishop of Los Angeles; Philosopher Abraham Kaplan, Dr. Vern Knudsen, former UCLA Chancellor, Geddes MacGregor, Dean of the Graduate School of Religion of the University of Southern California; Dr. Franklin Murphy, Chancellor of UCLA and dramatist Clifford Odets.
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.
