250,000 People Gather for Annual Solidarity Sunday for Soviet Jewry

Tens of thousands of persons were today joined by national and state legislators, Jewish activists and leaders as well as Archbishop John O’Connor in the annual mass rally opposite the United Nations in support of Soviet Jewry.

Under cloudy skies, a crowd estimated by Mayor Edward Koch at nearly 250,000 people gathered in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza for the 14th annual Solidarity Sunday for Soviet Jewry, sponsored by the Coalition to Free Soviet Jews.

Speaker after speaker stressed the urgency of the plight of Soviet Jewry, who continue to suffer from Soviet government sponsored harassment and intimidation and are refused the right to emigrate despite requests from hundreds of thousands of Jews that they be allowed to leave the USSR.

Last month merely 166 Jews were allowed to emigrate. While the figure represents an increase from the 97 allowed to emigrate during the previous month it continues to remain significantly less than during the peak year of 1979 when some 51,320 Jews were allowed to emigrate. Last year, about 900 Jews were allowed to leave the Soviet Union.

Herbert Kronish, chairman of the Coalition to Free Soviet Jews, urged the Reagan Administration to press for easing by the Soviet Union of its emigration policies. He called for the issue of Soviet Jewry to be raised during all bilateral discussions between the U.S. and the Soviets. “Freedom and dignity for Soviet Jews must be high on the agenda,” Kronish declared.

Before gathering in the plaza opposite the UN, thousands of demonstrators marched south along Fifth Avenue with Koch and other officials leading the protestors who carried placards declaring “Freedom for Soviet Jews” and “Let them live as Jews or let them leave,” and chanting “1,2,3,4 open up the iron door, 5,6,7,8 let our people emigrate.”

O’CONNOR GREETS OFFICIAL ENTOURAGE

As demonstrators passed St. Patrick’s Cathedral, O’Connor, a Cardinal-designate, greeted Koch and the other members of the official entourage in a demonstration of the church’s support for Soviet Jewry. Last year O’Connor greeted the demonstrators in similar fashion and told the rally’s organizers that he would address the gathering this year.

Keeping to his pledge, O’Connor, who was greeted with sustained applause, told the crowd, “I am of the passionate conviction that to destroy Jews anywhere is to destroy Christians everywhere.” The entire world, he said, “lives in slavery” when Jews are not allowed to live and practice their religion freely.

“They are our brothers and sisters,” Governor Mario Cuomo declared of Soviet Jews, and they are being “persecuted for being Jews.” Cuomo called for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to demonstrate by deeds not words, that his government is willing to allow Soviet Jews to live in freedom. “Mr. Gorbachev, let our people go, in the name of fairness, in the name of humanity. Let our people go.”

Elie Wiesel, author and chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, noted that the Soviet Union has denied the existence of the Holocaust when it constructed a monument at Bobi Yar near Kiev and failed to note that Jews were massacred there during the war. “What an arrogance,” Wiesel declared, “What a viciousness, to deny their Jewishness posthumously.”

Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, denounced the Soviet Union, saying that the anti-Semitism practiced today by the Soviet government is more oppressive than that of the Czarist regime. “Czarist anti-Semitism was a child’s play compared to that of the Soviets,” Netanyahu said.

Sen. Daniel Moynihan (D. N. Y.) said that should the Soviet Union return to the practice of permitting free emigration of Jews, than there would be a willingness by some Congressmen to explore the expansion of Most Favored Nation trade status with the Soviet Union.