Ii Soviet Women Appeal to Women of the World to Aid Them to Join Families in Israel

Eleven Soviet Jewish women have issued an appeal to “the women of the world” to intercede with the Soviet government for permission to emigrate to Israel. Ten women are from Moscow and one from Riga. The unusual document, in Russian, addressed “To You, Woman” was received by Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. It was read in English to the two hundred Jewish leaders from all sections of the country in attendance at the group’s Mid-Winter Conference which concluded four days of deliberations today. The Soviet women stated that their petitions to go to Israel to join “our husbands and brothers, our parents and children from whom we have been torn asunder” have been repeatedly refused by Soviet authorities.

“And nothing helps us in our degrading appeals to indifferent officials of the Ministry of Interior Affairs – neither our petitions nor the many months of waiting, nor tears, nor demands,” they continue. “As there is no formal ban on leaving the U.S.S.R., we get our refusals always orally (as if they felt that they are doing something that is vile and unlawful) and in a manner of irritation. They refuse us behind closed doors, being afraid of publicity, and at the same time, at the other end of the world, from high international tribunes, they proclaim loudly that in the U.S.S.R. there allegedly are no persons desirous of going to Israel. And what about us? And what about thousands like us? We who only live with the hope of going to Israeli”

Their appeal expresses thanks “to the peoples of the Soviet Union who had for centuries given shelter to our much-suffering people” and then adds, “But today in the second half of the twentieth century, we have our Jewish State. Whether it is good or bad, it is our country. This desire towards national reunification on the land of Israel is the inevitable end to the many centuries of the wanderings of the Jews. This is our right, just like it is the right of the Armenians to live in Armenia, of the Poles in Poland, And it must be understood rightly.” The closing paragraph pleads for intercession with the Soviet Government. It reads: “And we appeal to you. Woman, no matter who you are–a student in a ministry, a salesgirl or a cinema star, a housewife or a queen, we ask you, Woman, help us. Apply you, too, to the Soviet Government with the words: ‘Let them go in peace. Don’t keep them by force.”

Hadassah relayed this appeal to its more than 1300 chapters and groups throughout the country, urging that it be given the widest publicity. It also called upon American women’s organizations to support the appeal nationally and locally, “in the hope that the government of the U.S.S.R. will respond by opening the door for them and for all Jews who wish to emigrate to Israel and other countries.”