American Intellectuals Condemn Soviet Treatment of Jewish Minority

American intellectuals joined today to protest Soviet anti-Semitism and issued a public statement condemning the “forcible cultural extinction” of the 3 million Jews of the USSR. Protesting against “this frenzied anti-Jewish assault” were 198 prominent artists and intellectuals – including five Nobel Prize winners – who signed a two-page advertisement to appear in the Dec. 21 issue of the New York Review of Books.

The advertisement cites the 15th anniversary of the arrest and murder of 24 leading Soviet Jewish intellectuals accused of being “rebels, agents of American imperialism, nationalist bourgois Zionists and enemies of the USSR.” It points out that “this spurious charge has provided the dark theme of much Soviet propaganda on the Jews in all the subsequent years – tragically, even today” and charges that “official Soviet practice perpetuates the Stalin policy of depriving Soviet Jews of continuity with its past and of any hope of a future.”

The statement further charges that “Soviet policy in the Middle East, culminating in the diplomatic break with Israel, has been accompanied by an enormous anti-Semitic propaganda effort at home and abroad whose virulence has only rarely been equalled in recent Soviet history. The Jews have long been regarded in the USSR with suspicion and hostility as strangers, aliens and actual or potential enemies. The death of a culture, the enforced disappearance of a richly endowed community, the incitement of anti-Semitism, cannot be a matter of indifference.”

On Sunday, a vigorous protest against the Soviet Union’s treatment of its Jewish minority was endorsed by 344 members of the U.S. House of Representatives who signed their names to an advertisement in the New York Times on the occasion of the 19th anniversary of Human Rights Day. The advertisement was sponsored by the 25 organizations comprising the American Jewish Conference in Soviet Jewry.