B’nai B’rith Officials Hold 80-minute Meeting with Ceausescu

A promise to spur tourism to Rumania, and an urgent plea for accelerated Jewish emigration, highlighted an 80-minute meeting in Bucharest earlier this month between President Nicolea Ceausescu and David M. Blumberg, president of B’nai B’rith.

Details of the meeting that took place Nov. 4 were disclosed yesterday in a report to B’nai B’rith’s Board of Governors. Blumberg, accompanied by his wife and Dr. William Korey, B’nai B’rith’s director of international affairs, spent six days in Rumania at the invitation of its government.

Blumberg described the session with Ceausescu–an unusually long one between a head of state and a nongovernmental representative–as “very cordial” and, for the most part, “focussed on issues of concern to the Jewish community.”

“President Ceausescu quite forcefully made evident Rumania’s determination to maintain its independent foreign policy and to continue its good relations with Israel.” Blumberg reported. He said that the Rumanian President “called for a peace settlement in the Middle East as a primary need, and one which would open the way to the solution of other international problems.” It was “also satisfying” to be assured by Ceausescu and other officials of continued government support for Jewish cultural and religious institutions in the country, Blumberg said.

CONCERN OVER EMIGRATION DECLINE

But the B’nai B’rith leader added that he had told Ceausescu of “our concern and disappointment” over the diminishing rate of Jewish emigration–less than one-half of what it was in 1974–and that he “could not accept” Ceausescu’s response that Rumania’s Jewish community of some 60,000 had become “a shrinking base” for the number of Jews seeking to emigrate, “The evidence within the Rumanian Jewish community is otherwise,” Blumberg declared.

He also cited, however, the “relative freedom” of Jewish communal life in Rumania in contrast to most other East European countries “as a very positive aspect, a tribute to Rabbi Moses Rosen as the communal leader, and a circumstance that encourages closer relationships between Western and Rumanian Jewry.” In that respect, he said, B’nai B’rith would promote increased Jewish tourism to Rumania through its organizational travel programs, and “other forms of cultural exchange.” Blumberg reported that U.S. Ambassador Harry Barnes participated in the meeting with Ceausescu.