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Farbstein Tells Rally He Will Hold Hearings on Soviet Jewry

November 25, 1969
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The chairman of the House of Representatives’ European sub-committee told 1,000 persons demonstrating against Soviet anti-Semitism here yesterday that he plans to hold special hearings soon on the plight of Soviet Jewry and will focus on the case of 18 families from Soviet Georgia.

Rep. Leonard Farbstein, New York Democrat, pledged to hold the hearings in a speech he gave to a rally near the Soviet Mission to the United Nations sponsored by the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, an organization based here.

Eighteen students chained together and each bearing a card with a name of one of the 18 Georgian families pasted a copy of their petition to the Mission door. The original petition has been submitted to the UN Human Rights Commission by Israeli UN envoy Yosef Tekoah who also asked Secretary General U Thant to use his “good offices” on behalf of the Georgians’ appeal.

The rally also heard speeches by Congressmen Edward I. Koch and Allard Lowenstein who expressed support for efforts to gain full freedom and rights for behalf of Soviet Jews. Nancy Waldman, a student at the Juilliard School, sang a Jewish resistance song recently smuggled out of Russia. It’s title was “Otpusti Narod Moy”–“Let My People Go.”

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