About 500 Jews carrying placards and shouting slogans demonstrated in front of the Soviet Consulate yesterday in protest of the Leningrad trials. For the first time in the history of the Montreal Jewish community. Sabbath restrictions were waived so that all the Jews who wished to attend the rally could do so. The demonstrators walked peacefully from the headquarters of the Canadian Jewish Congress to the Soviet Consulate half a mile away. All local youth organizations were represented by members who carried placards reading, “Stop the Soviet Murderers”; “Let My People Go” and “I am a Jew.” In front of the Soviet Consulate, demonstrators were addressed by Murray Spiegel, vice chairman of the Canadian Jewish Congress of the Eastern Region and by Rabbi Allan Langner, president of the Board of Jewish Ministers of Greater Montreal. They expressed shock and anger at the sentences and demanded the Soviet government to free the 11. In Toronto, five Jewish students pleaded guilty to trespass charges and were each fined $25, after they entered the Soviet Embassy building in Ottawa and handcuffed themselves to the furniture. The students had participated in a rally outside the Embassy on Thursday where 300 youths, converging on Ottawa by bus from Toronto and Montreal, protested the severity of the sentences. Meanwhile, Monroe Abbey, national president of the Canadian Jewish Congress. announced that he had sent a telegram to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, expressing the Jewish community’s shock at the death sentences and requesting the Canadian government to intervene with the USSR to save the lives of those sentenced.
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.
