Dr. Goldmann Urges Moscow to Discuss Soviet Jewry with W.j.c. Leaders

Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, said here today that high Soviet officials are informed of the World Jewish Congress’ views on the situation of Soviet Jewry, and that the organization is ready to discuss this situation with them in the Soviet Union or anywhere else “in a way which will help to relieve apprehension and promote mutual understanding.”

The World Jewish Congress, Dr. Goldmann said, “is an international organization which has consistently sought to escape involvement in the cold war. We have for some time, as the Soviet authorities know, sought ways of discussing the Jewish problem in the Soviet Union with them in order to promote greater understanding and thereby contribute to a relaxation of international tensions.

“It comes all the more as a blow to us that Soviet authorities have made arrests and taken action which inevitably has evoked deep apprehension throughout the Jewish world and among men of good will generally,” Dr. Goldmann continued. “It is all the more sad because we have in recent months detected an improvement in the situation, as manifested by the publication of a Yiddish periodical for the first time in many years, and we have acknowledged these changes for the better, small though they have been.”

Dr. Goldmann said he would like “to express the sincere hope in the light of the repudiation of the repressive policies of the Stalin era, that the Soviet Government will review the action taken against Jews who are guilty of no crime other than devotion to their Jewish heritage, and that these men will be allowed to return to their homes. Such action would be an important contribution to the creation of a new and better atmosphere in which solutions must be found for the problems which now confront humanity,” he declared.