U.s., Belgium Jewish Groups Charge Soviet Jews Falsely Accused; Write to Podgorny

The heads of 27 major American Jewish organizations have written to Soviet President Nikolai V. Podgorny decrying the upcoming trials of Jewish prisoners as “based on false accusations designed to repress Jewish consciousness.” They urged him to release the more than 30 prisoners, who have been held incommunicado since an alleged Jewish hijacking of an Israel-bound plane at the Leningrad airport June 15, and to “halt growing acts of anti-Semitism.” Rabbi Herschel Schacter, chairman of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, spoke for the 27 organizations in stating that the arrests and the beating of 16-year-old Monus Mafpzer of Riga, brother of an arrestee, “buttress our fears regarding the imminent show trials.” The appeal to President Podgorny, sent last night, said anti-Jewish discrimination in the Soviet Union was a “violation of the declaration of the rights of peoples of the USSR and the United Nations Charter.” It added that “Jews who wish to leave the USSR for Israel to live as Jews request a basic human right recognized by your government.” (In Brussels, a similar telegram was sent to President Podgorny by the Coordinating Committee of Belgian Jewish Organizations. It protested the arrests and what it called intimidation and persecution of those who have expressed a desire to go to Israel. It compared the Soviet charges against the prisoners with those of two decades ago against Jewish doctors who allegedly had plotted to kill Stalin.)