A deputation representing the Anglo-Jewish Association was assured by a Foreign Office spokesman today that Her Majesty’s Government will do all in its power to discourage and prevent the practice of discrimination suffered by Jews in various parts of the world. The group, headed by Harold Seabag-Montevideo, was received at the Foreign Office by Gordon Roberts, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. The delegation raised the subject of the Association’s work in the field of human rights and was told by Mr. Roberts that the Government took a grave interest in the matter.
The current anti-Semitic campaign in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland, was traced today to the failure of Soviet policy in the Middle East which led to last June’s Six-Day War and subsequent violent attacks on Zionism and Israel in the Soviet press. According to Sir Barnett Manner, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Soviet propaganda quickly developed into indiscriminate propaganda against Jews generally.
Addressing a press conference here, Sir Barnett said the Soviet campaign spilled over into Poland where anti-Semitism was being used blatantly in the power struggle between rival factions in the ruling Communist party and as a means of suppressing liberal manifestations in Poland. “The Polish Government has not balked at making a tiny Jewish minority of some 18,000 souls the scapegoat for internal troubles in a land of over 32 million population.” Sir Barnett said, He added that the Board of Deputies “protests in the strongest terms this shocking development” and noted that “past experience has shown that the use of Jews as scapegoats is a device which is aimed at the destruction of liberty.”
The Jewish leader said that, speaking for Anglo-Jewry, he wanted to express appreciation to Prime Minister Harold Wilson for his representations in Moscow on behalf of Soviet Jews last January and to other private and public bodies which have tried to alleviate the plight of Jews in Eastern Europe.
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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.
