100 Riga Jews Petition Communist Party Congress to Let Them Emigrate to Israel

Copies of a petition signed by 100 Jewish workers of Riga, demanding the right to emigrate to Israel and addressed to the “Delegates of the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union” which will take place at the end of the month, and to “Leaders and Members of the Delegations of the Communist and Workers Parties” who will attend the Congress, have arrived at the offices of the American Jewish Committee here through contacts in Europe. The petition arrived on the eve of yesterday’s sit-in by scores of Soviet Jews in Moscow. Copies of the petition were also sent to Premier Golda Meir of Israel: Gideon Hausner, chairman of the Israeli Public Committee for Solidarity with the Jews of the Soviet Union; and Samuel Mikunis, secretary of the Communist Party of Israel (Rakah).

In a statement, Philip E. Hoffman, president of AJCommittee, said “I do not yet know if the 100 heads of families who issued this new appeal are the same people involved in the unprecedented acts of civil disobedience in the Soviet Union, but they represent hundreds of Riga Jews who seek the same objectives–the right to live as Jews or emigrate to Israel.” The petition, which contained the names of the signers, their addresses and family size, declared the signers had for “many years” unsuccessfully attempted to secure exit visas to emigrate to Israel. It stated in part, “There exists one ‘de facto’ Jewish nation in the world, equal among the other nations of the world. As the result of the Jewish national-liberation movement the Jewish State was re-established after 19 centuries, with the approval of the USSR and other countries of the Socialist camp. We consider ourselves an integral part of the Jewish people and we consider our spiritual and historical Homeland, Israel, as our Homeland.”