Hadassah Requests Soviet Union to Ease Lot of Jews in the USSR

The Soviet Government was requested in a resolution adopted here today by Hadassah, to grant its Jewish citizens “the rights and privileges accorded to other national and ethnic groups in the USSR, so they will not be cut off from the past, present and future of the Jewish people.”

The women’s Zionist organization held its banquet session last night at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, climaxing a three-day midwinter conference attended by more than 200 leaders, representing 318,000 members throughout the United States and Puerto Rico.

Mrs. Siegfried Kramarsky, national chairman of the Hadassah Medical Organization Committee in the United States, reported that the United States National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, Md., had made a grant of $172,000 to the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem for research into chronic kidney failure. She said the grant has enabled Hadassah to establish a dialysis unit under the direction of Dr. Walter J. Czacakes, as part of Hadassah’s Department of Clinical Research.

At last night’s dinner session, Dr. Joachim Prinz, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and honorary president of the American Jewish Congress, said the belief widely held in Europe that the United States is now focusing primary attention on Asia is one of the factors accounting for the rise of neo-Nazism in West Germany. He called on American labor, industry, and the academic and journalistic communities to mount an all-out effort to help “liberal forces in West Germany” to curb nationalistic and neo-Nazi influences.

A conference session devoted to Hadassah’s varied programs in Israel heard Mrs. Murray M. Shernoff, the organization’s chairman for Youth Aliyah, international child welfare movement, stress the need for increased financial support for Israel’s young people. She said that, for the past several years, about 8,500 youngsters were maintained at Youth Aliyah boarding installations and day centers. This year, however, she warned that drastic budgetary cuts will permit the program to accommodate only 8,100, and that it will be unable to accept any new children.

At another session Mrs. Benjamin Gottesman, Hadassah national chairman for vocational education, underscored the importance of Hadassah in training Israel’s young people in various trades “vital to the economy of that country.” She said that, since the largest proportion of Israel’s population — 60 percent — is in the lower-age brackets, the need for education and the solution of educational problems must be given top priority, “particularly in a population as diverse as it is in Israel.”