An emigration petition prepared in September by 38 Jewish mothers of Riga, Soviet Latvia, has reached Hadassah here and been forwarded to the Committee on the Status of Women of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The mothers, who signed their names and gave their addresses, charged that “Those whose parents are trying to get permission to go to Israel have been expelled from universities.” Thus, they continued, “All the roads have been cut off, and the road to our Homeland is closed. What then is the way out?” The women pleaded for help to “break the sinister silence, explain to people the terrible injustice committed against us.” A spokesman for the Committee on the Status of Women said that if the matter were deemed a general human-rights question, it would be considered by the Human Rights Commission next spring, but that if it were ruled a women’s matter the committee would not get to it until its next conference in 1972.
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