Dr. Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Jewish Congress, in a statement addressed to the Soviet Government today on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, expressed “profound sorrow” that the promised “equality, citizenship, religious and cultural liberty for all nationalities,” embodied in the 1917 revolution, has not been fulfilled for the Jews of Russia.
Dr. Goldmann, who paid tribute to the Soviet Union “for its remarkable achievements in so many fields of human endeavor” said that the situation of Russian Jewry has deteriorated badly compared to what it was in the first decade after the revolution, “by reason of frustrations and restrictions on the free exercise and maintenance of their cultural, religious and communal life and institutions.”
“In greeting the people of the Soviet Union,” Dr. Goldmann said, “we address once again an earnest appeal to the Government of the USSR to fulfill the spirit and terms of the Soviet constitution by removing the disabilities and inequalities which now hamper the religious and cultural freedoms of Russian Jewry, and to accord to them full facilities to pursue their communal way of life and to maintain contact with their fellow Jews abroad — the same rights and facilities enjoyed by other national minorities in the Soviet Union.”
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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.
