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Leading Americans Plan Delegation for Talks with Khrushchev on Jews

October 15, 1963
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A suggestion to send a delegation of 12 leading American personalities to Moscow to take up with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union was today under discussion here following the appeal adopted last Saturday by the all-day Conference on the Status of Soviet Jews asking the Soviet Premier to extend full religious and cultural rights to Soviet Jewry. The appeal was transmitted to Mr. Khrushchev yesterday.

The suggestion to send a delegation to Moscow came from U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, one of the sponsors of the Conference. He also urged that a permanent committee composed of American personalities be formed to follow up the decisions of the Conference–which was attended by about 100 authors, educators and clergymen–and to watch developments concerning Jews in the Soviet Union. Justice Douglas also suggested that the Soviet Government be requested to permit the presence of a foreign lawyer at trials for “economic crimes” some of which have till now culminated in sentencing Jews to death.

(Addressing a B’nai B’rith dinner in Chicago last night, Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General, called attention to the discriminations against Jews in the Soviet Union. “We believe that the denial of religious liberty is an ugly blot on the human conscience wherever and whenever it occurs–whether it restricts the rights of Protestants in Communist China, Jews in the Soviet Union, or Catholics in Cuba,” he said.)

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