7000 Jews from Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa Protest Sentences Given Leningrad 11

Seven thousand Jews from Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa demonstrated yesterday on Parliament Field and before the Soviet Embassy protesting the sentences given the “Leningrad defendants and the discrimination by the Soviet regime against that country’s 3.5 million Jews, ” Though many of the demonstrators made the trip from Montreal and Toronto in their own cars and the Canadian Jewish Congress had chartered 50 buses to bring demonstrators to Ottawa, many Jews were left behind because of lack of transportation. The protestors were greeted at Parliament Field by Mitchell Sharp, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who told them, “This is a very impressive demonstration that will not go unheeded in Canada or anywhere in the world. I am very happy that your demonstrations succeeded in commuting the death sentence of the two Leningrad Jews. I know that all of you here believe that if the principal of human dignity will be upheld, whether it is a question of Jews or non-Jews, human dignity must be respected.” At the demonstration later at the Soviet Embassy, Sidney Harris, speaking for the CJC, said that “the interest in the fate of Russian Jews will continue as long as the Soviet Union does not respect the human rights and the rights of human beings to leave their country and go elsewhere in accordance with the principle of human rights incorporated in the Charter of the United Nations to which the Soviet Union is a signatory.”