A total of 109 key members of the House of Representatives have sent an urgent letter to Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, protesting the “extraordinary acceleration” of the Kremlin’s campaign against the Jewish cultural movement in the Soviet Union as well as the 90 percent slash in the rate of Jewish emigration in recent months, according to the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ).
The legislators said they were “greatly troubled by reports of a systematic campaign of harassment and intimidation directed against Jewish culturalists, with the apparent intention of destroying the Jewish culture movement,” including “arrests, interrogations and imprisonments. Many Jewish study groups and seminars have been closed down.” The signers also declared that they were “deeply disturbed by the steep decline of exit visas.”
The letter was initiated by Rep. Stephen Solarz (D. N.Y.), chairman of the Asian and Pacific Affairs Committee, in cooperation with the Center for Russian and East European Jewry and the SSSJ, the SSSJ reported. Copies of the letter were sent to President Reagan and Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who were urged to persist in their intervention with Soviet authorities to cease their assault on Soviet Jews.
Several resolutions on these issues directed to both Brezhnev and Reagan are also being prepared in the Senate and House under the auspices of Sens. Claiborne Pell (D. R. I.) and Rudy Boschwitz (R. Minn.), and Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D. Colo.) and Christopher Smith (R. N.J.).
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.
