An estimated 200,000 Jews from the New York Metropolitan area today showed their support of Soviet Jews seeking emigration by marching down Fifth Avenue in the annual Solidarity Day Freedom March. Thousands lined up in the streets under sunny skies to watch as the marchers of all ages, but predominantly young, filed by carrying such signs as, “They Can Stop Soviet Jews From Speaking Out, But They Can’t Stop Us,” the theme of the parade. Many of the spectators wore buttons saying, “They Can’t Stop Us.”
Many of the marchers sang in Hebrew and shouted slogans reminiscent of the civil rights marches of the 1960s–“Freedom Now,” and “One, two, three, four, open up the iron door; five, six, seven, eight, let my people immigrate.” There were also signs urging freedom for Syrian and Iraqi Jews.
The Solidarity Day was sponsored by the 79 constituents of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry and included participants from New York City, Long Island, Westchester and Rockland Counties and New Jersey. But there were also people from as far away as Massachusetts, Washington, D.C. and western Pennsylvania. Stanley H. Lowell, Conference chairman, presided at the rally.
Among the marchers were 40 prominent Jewish and Christian clergymen representing Soviet prisoners of conscience; academicians in caps and gowns showing support for their beleaguered colleagues in the USSR; youths in prison garb and a huge float depicting a Soviet labor camp tower.
OPPOSITION TO J/M-V SCORED BY JACKSON
The march ended at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the United Nations where Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D.Wash.) declared that “thousands of brave people in the Soviet Union are depending on us” to use the United States’ “leverage to bargain hard for progress toward the free movement of people between East and West. I can tell you that the Congress is more determined than ever to insure that our economic strength is harnessed to the cause of freedom of emigration by enacting into law the Jackson/Mills-Vanik amendment,” he declared.
Jackson scored the Nixon Administration’s opposition to the amendment which would bar U.S. trade benefits and credits to the Soviet Union unless it relaxes its emigration restrictions. “Quiet diplomacy slides all too easily into silent diplomacy,” he said. “The truth is that it took the introduction of our amendment to put this issue on the White House agenda with the Soviet Union–and it will take passage of our amendment to keep it there.”
Another speaker, Rep. Robert F. Drinan (D. Conn.) also pledged that Congress would not back down from its support of the J/M-V amendment. “I assure you, the Congress of the United States will not yield to those in government and business who want detente to grow and American corporations to flourish at the expense of a fundamental freedom of Soviet Jews.”
CHRISTIANS URGED NOT TO BE ‘GOOD GERMANS’
Drinan, a Roman Catholic priest who represented the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry, declared that the problem of Soviet Jewry is one for Christians throughout the world because “It is their neglect and their silence which has allowed this agony to go on.”
He implored Christians not to be “Good Germans” and “not to be silent as they were during the holocaust. I beseech them to remember today as never before the suffering of the Jews in Kiev, Leningrad and Moscow.” Drinan also called for the Pope’s aid to Soviet Jewry and for the Vatican to recognize Israel. “If the liberation of Soviet Jews does not materialize there will be few to blame but the Christians of America and of the world,” he said.
Among those participating in the rally were Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel; Mayor Abraham D. Beame; Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R.NY); Likud leader Menachem Beigin; Elie Wiesel, and various Congressmen from the New York area. Earlier the New York State Legislature joined Gov. Malcolm Wilson as he proclaimed today Solidarity Sunday for Soviet Jews. Both the Assembly and Senate urged the President and Congress to consider the plight of Soviet Jews before granting most favored nation trade status to the USSR.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
