About 3,000 persons held a mass demonstration on behalf of Soviet Jews in downtown Montreal yesterday and then marched on the Soviet Consulate where, facing barred doors, they demanded human rights for Soviet Jewry and the right to emigrate.
The demonstrators massed first in Dominion Square, carrying flags, banners and slogans. A band played Jewish and Israeli folk songs. Pupils and teachers from every Jewish day school in the area participated as did the two Jewish members of Parliament from the Montreal area, Sheila Finestone and Gerry Wiener. Herbert Marx, a member of the Quebec National Assembly, and Mayor J. Lang of Cote St. Luke were also present along with leaders of suburban communities.
After Rabbi David Sabbad read the invocation in French, the 3,000 demonstrators marched the several blocks to the Soviet Consulate. There, Irving Cotler, a professor of law at McGill University, indicied the Soviet government for raising anti-Semitism “to the level of a State religion.”
“I say to the representatives of the Soviet Union opposite me behind closed doors, J’Accuse for the crime of inhumanity and crimes against humanity,” Cotler declared. He vowed, “We shall not take leave of this assembly without resolving to do something every day on behalf of Soviet Jews.”
A large menorah was raised in front of the Consulate. Each of its seven candles was lighted by a child on behalf of Jewish prisoners in the USSR.
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.
