Catholic and Protestant spokesmen joined Boston Jewry in a vigil at Boston Common to protest the arrest and conviction in the Soviet Union of Boris Kochubiyevsky, the Jewish engineer who was sentenced to three years imprisonment on charges of slandering the Soviet State and social system.
The Rt. Rev. Francis J. Lally, Editor of the Catholic organ. The Pilot; Bishop John M. Burgess of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and Lewis H. Weinstein, chairman of the American-Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, addressed the protest meeting sponsored by the Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Boston.
“There are minority peoples in all parts of the world,” Msgr. Lally said, according to the Jewish Advocate, “and, however small may be their numbers, they have every right to be proud of their heritage, their own tradition, and their own faith. To deny them this right is to rob them of their essential identity as human beings…Boris Kochubiyevsky,” the prelate declared, “under Soviet law itself, should be freed from his prison camp and be allowed to emigrate in the normal manner. We appeal to the Soviet authorities not to punish this man for his Jewishness, but to realize his sentiments represent the highest kind of loyalty, for which, far from being punished, indeed he should be praised.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
