Heads of Two Israeli Delegations to USSR Say They Were Treated Cordially by Hosts

The heads of two Israeli delegations that arrived here yesterday after attending international conferences in the Soviet Union reported that their groups were treated with utmost cordiality and friendliness by their Russian hosts. Prof. Mark Mozes, whose nine-man group of Israeli doctors spent two weeks in the USSR, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “if anything, we were given friendlier and more cordial treatment than the other delegations.” Prof. A. Pines, whose three-member delegation attended an international conference on the history of science in Moscow, reported that the organizers-the Soviet delegation-had asked him to chair one session and that the Israeli flag, along with flags of other nations, was flown outside the conference building throughout the gathering. Prof. Mozes refused to speculate on the political implications of the Soviet attitude toward the visiting Israeli doctors who attended a conference of surgeons and toured parts of Russia. “I can only report objectively what I have seen. It is not for me to draw the implications of these gestures,” Dr. Mozes said. He said that the Soviet hosts at times seemed to go out of their way to extend “as friendly an attitude as possible” to their Israeli colleagues. He reported that he was invited by the Dean of the Medical School to be his luncheon guest. “The Dean and his three top assistants took me to lunch and discussed with me freely, without the slightest inhibitions, all the subjects which I raised, medical or more general,” Dr. Mozes said. “All the questions I asked were freely answered. As far as I know, no other foreign delegate received such a personal invitation.”

Dr. Mozes described his delegation’s visit to the memorial at Babi Yar in the Ukrainian village where 40,000 Jews were massacred by the Nazis during World War II. He said his group was accompanied on the tour by 20 other delegates from different countries. An inscription on the memorial in Russian states: “To the memory of the 90,000 people murdered here by the Nazis.” There is no mention of the religion of the victims. Prof. Mozes reported, but the Intourist guide who accompanied them said the victims included 40,000 Jews and 50,000 others. “At no point did he seem to want to hide the identity of the victims,” Prof. Mozes said. Asked to comment about the recent arrival in Israel of human bones, allegedly the bones of Jewish victims of Babi Yar brought to Israel by four American students. Prof. Mozes said, “This simply seems to be impossible. It is absurd. The bones of the victims were buried by the Nazis who poured chemical substances over them until they disintegrated. The site itself is covered with flowers and trees and it seems out of the question that human bones could be found here.” (The students who brought the bones to Israel claimed to have found them at Babi Yar and smuggled them out of Russia. The bones were buried in Israel with full religious rites by the Chief Rabbinate which apparently accepted the story without question.)