House Hears Plea for U.S. Action on Mistreatment of Soviet Jewry

Congressman Leonard Farbstein, New York Democrat, in a statement on the Floor of the House of Representatives today called upon the Congress to act favorably on his resolution, introduced earlier this year, to have the U.S. Mission to the United Nations seek adoption by the United Nations of a resolution condemning manifestations of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.

“It is singularly appropriate at this time, in view of the approach of the Jewish High Holidays, to call attention to the fact that although the Soviet Union has agreed they will not pollute the air with their super-bombs, and loudly publicize their desire for peaceful co-existence with the peoples of the world, there continues within the Soviet Union itself practiced persecution of its Jewish population, ” the New York Congressman said.

“Apparently,” he continued, “this country has been successful in persuading Mr. Khrushchev and his cohorts that it is uncivilized to explode poisonous ingredients in the atmosphere–we have been unable to convince him that the subtle harassment of Soviet Jewry is similarly uncivilized and closely parallels the initial actions of Germany’s Hitler against the Jews.”

He also listed some of the evidences of persecution presently taking place within the Soviet Union: the closing of synagogues; the insufficiency of prayer shawls and prayer books and other artifacts essential to the observance of all Jewish holidays; the closing of the last synagogue and the Jewish cemetery in Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia; the conviction of Moscow Jews on the charge of selling matzohs; the refusal of the Soviet Union to allow the Israeli investigators to examine captured Nazi records to obtain information on Nazi Adolf Eichmann; the execution of Jews for alleged economic crimes; and the use of the Soviet controlled press to inflame the populace against their Jewish neighbors.