A Jewish delegation scored a first here last Friday when it presented two communications to the Soviet Embassy appealing for an exit visa for the wife and son of the Jewish poet Peretz Markish and for the rehabilitation of 24 Jewish writers and artists who were executed in 1952 during the Stalin regime. Moshe Brodetzky, chairman of the Washington Committee for Soviet Jewry, who led the delegation which included a mother and her four children to the Embassy, said that Anatoly P. Kotov, an Embassy press attache, conversed with them at some length and kept the communications after they were presented to him. In the past, Brodetzky said, after the group emerged from the Embassy, petitions on behalf of Soviet Jewry have been rejected and some Jewish groups who have gone to the Embassy to protest Soviet mistreatment of Jews have been refused admittance because they did not have prior appointments. One of the communications submitted by the delegation appealed for visas for Esther and David Markish whose applications for emigration visas have been refused by Soviet authorities. The other appeal asked the Soviet government to disclose the burial places of the 24 who were executed, punish those responsible for the executions, rehabilitate the writers and artists, and to allow publication of their works. The unpublished works include an account of Jewish heroism during World War II and the other is a history of Jewish suffering under the Nazis. The group’s visit to the Embassy followed an hour-long memorial service at Lafayette Park to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the execution by the Stalin regime of 24 leading Jewish writers and cultural leaders which included Markish.
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.
