Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, met here today with Sweden’s Prime Minister Tage Erlander and urged him to take up the issue of discriminations against Soviet Jews by the Soviet authorities during his forthcoming meeting with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin.
Addressing a mass meeting here, to launch a fund-raising drive on behalf of the Tel Aviv Museum of the History of European Jews, Dr. Goldmann warned that preservation of Judaism in the current era is endangered by the fact that “Jews everywhere are comparatively well off.”
“Indispensable to world Jewry’s survival,” he stated, “is the creation of new motivational sources based primarily on Jewish history, Jewish sufferings, Jewish achievements. Education and knowledge are needed to create greater Jewish pride. Without pride in Israel, one views the Jewish future pessimistically. Israel’s great task is to replace and to surpass the annihilated Jewish centers in Europe.”
With regard to the position of the Jews in the Soviet Union, Dr. Goldmann said that while it is true that Jews hold prominent positions there, they are “prevented from enjoying their religious, lingual and cultural identity.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.