400 People Mark Anniversary of Death of Soviet Jewish Writers

About 400 people met on the steps of the public library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in mid-town Manhattan yesterday to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the execution of 24 Jewish poets and writers in the Lubianka prison in Moscow during the Stalinist regime. The event here was sponsored by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry Similar events were held in other parts of this country, Canada and England.

A mixed crowd of young and old stood under the hot sun listening to speakers who were standing on the library steps beside four large tombstones each bearing the name of a poet whose work was read that afternoon. A spokesman for the Greater New York Conference said that these four poets are Peretz Markish, Leyb Kvitko, David Hofshteyn and Itzik Feffer, were representative of the entire group. Among the speakers was critic and author Cleveland Amory who read a letter written by Soviet Jews to the Jews in the West entitled “Brother Jews. An Appeal.” Most of the hour-long program was devoted to the reading of poetry of the Soviet Jewish writers. Each poem was read first in English and then in Yiddish.

Stanley H. Lowell, chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry issued a statement noting that despite the signing of agreements at the European Security Conference in Helsinki, “hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews are still waiting for permission to emigrate; more than 35 Soviet Jews languish in prison camps and all Soviet Jews are denied their basic human right of freedom of religion. But the cruel and senseless series of executions in 1952, which demolished the remnants of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union have been commemorated in the best possible way–hundreds of thousands have declared their Jewish consciousness, refused to be intimidated by Soviet tactics and applied to leave for Israel and elsewhere.”

EVENTS MARKED IN OTHER CITIES

In Boston, representatives of the Soviet Jewry Committee met with Newton’s Mayor, Theodore Mann, and proclaimed Aug. 12 “a day of commitment to human rights for all peoples and a special remembrance to the ‘Night of the Murdered Poets.'” In Minneapolis, a dramatic memorial ceremony was sponsored by the Minnesota-Dakotas Action Committee for Soviet Jewry.

In Washington, the daily Soviet Jewry vigil opposite the Soviet Embassy memorialized the murdered poets and intellectuals with a mincha service and readings of the works of the slain poets. In Toronto, the Canadian Jewish Congress sponsored a meeting at Beth Tzedic Synagogue commemorating the anniversary of the executions. In London, Dr. S. Levenberg, acting president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews issued an appeal to Soviet authorities to publicly rehabilitate the names of the Jewish writers and artists and to punish those responsible for their deaths.