B’nai B’rith Expert Sees No Future for Jews in USSR

William Korey, the B’nai B’rith’s director of international policy research, predicted today a grim future for Jewish survival in the Soviet Union. “The likelihood of a Jewish future in the USSR is exceedingly dim, probably non-existent,” he said.

Speaking at the annual three-day policy conference of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ). Korey explained that since 1948 the Kremlin has been successful in assimilating or eliminating its remaining two million Jews. While Jewish activists approve the recent increase in the emigration of Soviet Jews, Korey maintained that this emigration “required the acquiescence of the Soviet government” and is leading to the fulfillment of Moscow’s objective of solving its” Jewish problem. “Korey said that the Soviet government’s pervasive official harassment created an activist movement which sought to “get out of the Soviet system” rather than change it.

AWARDS TO SEN. JACKSON, EUGENE GOLD

At last night’s opening dinner, the NCSJ presented its Solidarity Award to Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D. Wash.), co-author of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, and Brooklyn District Attorney Eugene Gold, NCSJ chairman for the last three years. Gold is to be succeeded by Burton S. Levinson, a Los Angeles attorney and chairman of the Commission of Soviet Jewry of the Jewish Federation-Council of Greater Los Angeles. In 1974, Levinson was in Moscow and became one of the only two Western lawyers to witness a Soviet political trial in more than 30 years. Jackson and his wife were also presented a silver Chanukah candelabra for their support of Soviet Jewry. Mrs. Jackson is co-chairperson of the U.S. Congressional Wives Committee for Soviet Jewry. In accepting the award, Jackson credited the Jewish people with “alerting the world” to the cause of freedom by their movement for Soviet Jewry.