Cantorial tones sounded from the steps of the Capitol today, concluding a 35-minute memorial for the 24 Jewish poets, novelists and intellectuals executed by Stalin on Aug. 12, 1952. Nearly a score of Congressmen gathered on the steps of the House of Representatives as Rep. Peter A. Peyser (R. N.Y.), who presided, called the executions “one of the most dastardly acts perpetrated by the Communists in Moscow.”
Rep. Thomas M. Rees (D. Calif.) warned that Stalin’s attempt “to exterminate a culture” could be renewed. Rep. Gilbert Gude (R. Md.) said that “our century has continued to witness that policy of oppression” since the Russian pogroms of the late 1800s. Worldwide attention must be focused on the Soviet Union, Gude said, to aid a “persecuted minority who have been denied the basic rights of citizenship.”
Dr. Isaac Franck, executive vice president of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington, said the attempt at “systematic cultural destruction” of the Jews in the USSR had failed in the face of “a reaffirmation by the Soviet Jews of their Jewishness.” He declared: “We will continue to protest, to appeal to the conscience of the world, and we will continue to demand from the Soviet Union: Free the prisoners, remove the obstacles, stop the terror and punishments, let Soviet Jews go to their freedom.” The program ended with remarks by Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg and chants by Cantor Noah Griver of Beth Sholom Congregation.
(In Toronto, more than 300 persons thronged Nathan Philip Square here last night at a public meeting to commemorate the anniversary. Rochel Korn of Montreal, a Yiddish poetess, recounted her personal contacts with the murdered intellectuals. The protestors heard a tape of a telephone conversation made two days earlier with Esther Markish, widow of Peretz Markish, one of the 24 victims, and her son, David, which included an English translation of a Russian poem by David about his father. Speakers joined in pleas for Soviet Jews to be allowed to leave for Israel.)
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