Barmore Assails Soviet Union for Cruelty to Jews

Jacob Barmore, Israeli Minister Plenipotentiary to the United Nations, flayed the Soviet Union yesterday for its “incomprehensible cruelty” to its Jews and told the UN Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, “After living for 19 years in the throes of cultural and spiritual strangulation, the Jews in the USSR want out, to join their families in Israel, where they can make a new start.” Addressing the Subcommission, which on Tuesday established machinery for communications on violations of human rights, Barmore deplored the lack of such machinery 19 years ago “when the flower of the (Soviet) Jewish culture was ruthlessly plucked by a cruel despot (Stalin).” He noted that while the murdered cultural leaders were later rehabilitated, Jewish culture in the Soviet Union remains “a shambles.” He elaborated: “No attempt has been made to resuscitate the Jewish culture, education, press and theatre that formerly had been the pride of the community.”

Barmore stated that “Many Soviet Jews, some of them world-renowned Hebrew poets, who mastered their national language in the most dismal circumstances, wish to join their families in Israel, where they can make a new start, in their own national language,” and many Jews want to go to Israel where “they can practice their religion, openly, away from official terror.” He cited as an example of “incomprehensible cruelty” the action of Soviet authorities barring Jews from observing the anniversary of the deaths of their loved ones who had died in the Holocaust by holding memorial services at the “mass graves dug by the Nazi monsters: 40,000 in Ponar, Wilna; 80,000 in Babi Yar, thousands in Riga.” Many, he said, were arrested for “hooliganism” when they protested the dispersal order. Barmore gave as another example of “cruelty” the case of Esther and David Markish, the widow and son of the late Jewish poet Peretz Markish, who was murdered on Aug. 12, 1952. Their applications for exit visas “had twice been rejected by Soviet authorities,” he said, adding that there are thousands of similar cases of rejection of applications for exit permits and that the rejections are contrary to universal and national laws.

But, Barmore noted, the plight of Soviet Jewry was not of concern only to Soviet Jews, as internationally famous non-Jewish Soviet scholars have written on behalf of Soviet Jews. On May 20, 1971, three scholars, A Sakharov, A. Tvierdochlebov and V. Chalidze, sent a letter to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in which they said in part: “The unlawful action of the authorities preventing the free departure of people from the Soviet Union, in particular the free repatriation of Jews to Israel, has caused, during the last five years, active protest on the part of the repatriates. They protested against unmotivated and legally unfounded refusals to issue exit permits.” And, Barmore added, on May 31, Chalidze, a member of the Committee on the Rights of Men, sent a letter to UN Secretary General U Thant asking him to find it possible to assist as consultant in the establishment of at least non-political contacts between his country and Israel to enable many Jews to realize “their dream of their reunification with their families.”