Soviet authorities are apparently displaying considerable concern over the forthcoming two-day meeting of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, which is to open here April 5.
The Soviet Embassy today transmitted to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency office here two releases from the Soviet Novosti press agency on this subject. One is published in the name of a number of Soviet rabbis and “Jewish community leaders in the Soviet Union” — the usual method employed in refuting charges of anti-Semitic actions in the USSR. The other is a statement by the Jewish workers of the Krasny Proletary plant in Moscow, describing the Washington conference as an “insult” to the Soviet Jews.
The Jewish workers are quoted as saying “the aim of the Washington conference is to ascribe to our state what is not to be found in it, which means to slander the Soviet Union. A discreditable undertaking! We protest against it. ” The “protest, ” signed by the Soviet rabbis and Jewish community leaders, asks: “In whose interests are you acting, spreading lies about the Soviet Union, about our life?”
Asserting that “we fully enjoy the civil rights enjoyed by all Soviet people, ” the statement concludes, “On behalf of the congregations in Moscow, Kiev and Minsk, we strongly protest against slanderous attacks on our Soviet country which has done so much for the Jewish people.”
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.
