Archbishop Condemns Exit Fees

Rabbi Samuel Kenner, chairman of the Soviet Jewry Committee of the Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Boston and chairman of the Committee on Catholic-Jewish Relations of the Archdiocesan Ecumenical Commission, commended Cardinal-Elect Archbishop Humberto S. Medeiros of Boston for his recent statement criticizing the Soviet government for exacting exit fees from Jews seeking to emigrate.

Archbishop Medeiros said the exit fees are nothing more than “a mere pretext designed to obscure the despicable blackmail, demanded for the free and legitimate exercise of the basic human right to leave one country for another.” Over the decades, he added, the Soviet Union has created and manipulated anti-Semitism as a “potent weapon of social control. Therefore, today, our Jewish brothers in the Soviet Union remain a special target of this demand for ransom.”