The “bureaucratic boondoggling of Soviet officialdom” has caused Rep. Bertram L. Podell, New York Democrat, to postpone plans to lead a 20-Congressman “freedom flight” to Moscow to protest the Leningrad sentences against 11 defendants, nine of them Jews, Podell said over the weekend, Meanwhile, he is urging the parliaments of other nations to “follow the laudatory lead of the House and Senate and adopt similar resolutions condemning the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union.” Podell had planned to take his plea directly to Premier Alexei N. Kosygin, but “The humanitarian efforts of my colleagues to plead the case of basic civil liberties for 3.5 million people held in virtual captivity will not just pass away. We will get the visas and we will go to Moscow, bringing with us legislators from all over the world.” Podell accused the Soviet Embassy of “stalling” and acting with “deliberate deceit,” (In New York, motion picture producer-director Otto Preminger said he had written on behalf of the city’s theatrical unions to their Muscovite counterparts to protest the sentences and the general situation of Soviet Jewry.)
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.
