Black Official Cautions U.S. to Go Slow on Trades Treaty with USSR

Reports of continuing Soviet harassment of visa applicants and their families has prompted a leading Black official in Mayor Abraham Beame’s administration to caution Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D. Wash.) and other U.S. officials to “go slow” on ratifying the U.S.-Soviet trade treaty. Benjamin Malcolm, the NY City Commissioner of Correction who Just returned from a visit to the Soviet Union, said he was preparing a special memorandum on his contacts with Jews in Moscow. Lvov, Leningrad and Kiev.

“If there’s to be any success with favored (trade) treatment, Soviet Jews feel that their phone should be turned back on,” Malcolm told labor reporter Victor Reisel on a WEVD radio Interview. He reported that “at the moment all phones to Jewish persons who wish to emigrate have been turned off” and some have to travel 10 miles to communicate with each other. He said the Soviet Jews also want restoration of their right to read Western newspapers and the elimination of the 900 ruble (about $1000) emigration head tax.

In another development, the Academic Committee on Soviet Jewry which is headquartered in New York has sent a cable of support to Grigory Rosenstein, a 36-year-old Moscow mathematician and cybernetician, and his wife. Natalia, who have been on a hunger strike since Nov. 19. The Rosensteins, and their two children, ages 5 and 12, have been refused visas to emigrate to Israel. They have requested Israeli citizenship. The Academic Committee is mobilizing its members on behalf of the family.

In a letter to Congress, released by the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, Natalia urged the legislators to use “extreme foresight” in acting on the Trade Reform Bill so as to assure that the Soviet Union complies with the American trade agreement.