Three thousand Jews and sympathizers massed outside the Kennedy Space Center Tuesday during the U.S. launch of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, asking the Soviet Union to allow emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. It was reported by the South Florida Conference on Soviet Jewry. A giant weather balloon bore aloft the message, “Good luck U.S., Soviet Spacemen. Launch South Florida Conference stated that the message, in English and Russian, was to point out that the rally was not in protest of the space mission, but rather was called to urge further cooperation with the USSR in granting emigration to Soviet Jews.
A Chicago nun, Sister Ann Gillen, of the Inter-Religious Task Force on Soviet Jewry addressed the crowd, and messages of support were received from numerous public figures, including Senator Henry Jackson and Florida Congressman William Lehman. A letter from Moscow scientist Alexander Druck to the spacemen was released, asking their help in obtaining a visa to Israel, which has been denied on the pretext of his work in Soviet space research, Druck pointed out that this sharing of space information makes his refusal absurd.
At the height of the rally, a new “freedom” flag, secretly raised in Moscow by Soviet Jews, was unfurled, in an open letter to Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, at the Cape to witness the launch, Americans of all faiths charged the Soviet Union with an increase in anti-Semitism and with staging show trials to discourage its Jews from asking to emigrate.
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.
