More than 3,000 Jews, representing all political and religious segments of the local Jewish population, demonstrated today on behalf of Soviet Jewry in front of the Soviet Consulate. More than half the demonstrators were students. Some them were draped in chains, symbolizing the chains borne by Soviet Jewry. Others carried banners reading “Let My People Go” and “Freedom Now.” Among the participants were Jewish veterans of Canada’s armed forces dressed in uniform and wearing their medals and ribbons, and members of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, the Canadian Jewish Congress, Federated Zionist organizations. B’nai B’rith and women’s organizations. Monroe Abbey, president of the CJC, read the text of a letter he had sent to Leonid I. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, asking for freedom of emigration for these Jews who wish to leave the Soviet Union and full religious and cultural freedom for these Jews who wish to remain. Prof. Irving Cutler, professor of law at York University, demanded that the USSR grant to its Jews the same rights it grants to other national minority groups. It was announced that a 72-hour vigil will begin outside the Soviet Consulate on Tuesday, the day the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union opens in Moscow, and plans were also announced for a week-long (March 29-April 2) phone-in to tie up the telephone lines of the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, the Soviet Consulate in Montreal, and the offices of Aeroflot and In tourist.
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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.
