First in Nation NY State Legislature Urges Nixon, Congress to Consider Plight of Soviet Jew in East-

In a strongly worded resolution, the New York State Legislature has asked President Nixon and the Congress to “consider the plight of Soviet Jew prior to granting the most favored nation status to the Soviet Union and to call upon the Soviet government to end its persecution of the Jews.” Assemblyman Stuart Levine and Senator Ralph J. Marino were the key sponsors of the legislation. In a press conference here, Levine said that the New York State Legislature is the first in the nation to take an official stand “in support of those millions of people around the world concerned for the fate of Jews in the Soviet Union.”

In accepting the resolution, Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Director of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, thanked the members of the Legislature for their resolution, which he described as a “great expression of moral concern which will give impetus to the efforts in the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States, not to grant most favored nation status to the Soviet Union or any country which denies its citizens the right to live where they desire.” He noted the more than two months effort put in to secure the passage of this resolution by the sponsors and leadership.

The resolutions in the Assembly and Senate, each with more than 40 Democratic and Republican co-sponsors, will be sent on to Nixon, Vice-President Spiro Agnew, Secretary of State William P. Rogers, Secretary of the Senate Albert J. Abrams and to each member of Congress from New York. Marino, in introducing the resolution, said: “Some 30 years ago the people of the world turned their backs on an entire people and because of that we have witnessed the killing of six million Jews. We can no longer be blind men when persecution exists in the world, and that persecution exists today in the Soviet Union.”