The American Jewish Committee today issued a report denying that Jews in the Soviet Union enjoy full religious freedom, as claimed in a statement distributed last July by the Soviet delegation to the United Nations. The AJC report pointed out that “contrary to recent Soviet propaganda, the 2,000,000 Jews who are not free to leave Russia or its satellite countries are still victims of discrimination and persecution with their religious freedom severely limited, their cultural life throttled, and thousands still prisoners on charges long since admitted by the Kremlin to be false.
The report is being distributed to all members of Congress, Irving M. Engel, president of the American Jewish Committee, revealed. Copies of the report; Mr. Engel said have been sent to chairman Walter F. George of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and chairman James P. Richards of the House Foreign Affairs, Committee “as a public service to remind Americans that Soviet propaganda about respect for human rights is not matched by its daily practices and that Stalin’s successors are still following his oppressive policies toward religious and other minority groups.”
Declaring that the last three “years have seen “signs of leniency toward Russia’s ethnic, religious and cultural groups,” the AJC report says that “this easing has not been extended equally to Jews.” The specific charges against Soviet Russia by the AJC are:
1. Religious freedom for Jews still is sharply restricted and the main provisions of the 1929 Soviet decree against religious organizations remain in force. Although some synagogues have been reopened and Jewish prayer books are reported to be in print again for the first time in 39 years, “the true measure of religious freedom in the Soviet Union is the 1929 decree with its strict limitations.”
2. Soviet Jews are not allowed even the limited cultural freedom allowed to other groups. They cannot publish their own newspapers and books, or revive their own theatre. All known Yiddish writers were arrested and deported in 1948, and many of them were killed, or died in jail or penal camps. A few survivors were recently released.
3. Most of the Jews unjustly detained since the height of the Russian anti-Semitic drive in February 1953 are still in prisoned, although the Soviet leaders have admitted publicly that the charges against the prisoners were trumped-up.
4. Anti-Semitism continues as the official policy of the Russian government. The Red leaders have made no attempt to re-educate the population, still infected by Government-sponsored anti-Semitic campaigns of the recent past. “In the armed forces, the diplomatic services and some institutions of higher learning, “the report says, “discriminatory policies introduced by secret Communist Party instructions in the late forties and early fifties are still observed.”
5. The government ban on Jewish emigration to Israel remains in force, although a few persons, mostly elderly, have been allowed to leave.
The AJC report points out that the Soviet government granted a broad amnesty to Soviet citizens who collaborated with Nazis during the war, including many who served in German police and extermination squads. “Their criminal record was wiped out,” the AJC states. “Yet no amnesty has been granted to the Jews, who remain-imprisoned while their persecutors are free.”
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