Grave Concern Expressed over Soviet Campaign Against Jews

The Presidium and Steering Committee of the Brussels World Conference on Soviet Jewry opened its semiannual meeting here today with expressions of “grave concern” over the intensified Soviet campaign against Jewish emigration activists and dissidents which, it was claimed, exceeds in virulence anything experienced by Soviet Jews since the end of the Stalin era.

Delegates attending the meeting cited anti-Semitic articles in the Soviet press and anti-Semitic television programs and films currently being shown in the Soviet Union. Yosef Almogi, chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency Executives, who is also Presidium chairman, said one of the most alarming developments in the USSR was the allegation that Jewish scientists Alexander Lerner, Vladimir Slepak and Anatoly Sharansky who have been campaigning openly for years to obtain exit visas, belonged to a spy ring in the service of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

A communique released to the press today claimed that “The upsurge of official anti-Semitism and the attacks on the scientists are intended to subdue and crush the Jewish revival in the Soviet Union which expresses itself in the return to Jewish religion, language and culture as well as a longing for the homeland, Israel.” The communique said that harassment was the lot of Jews who apply for exit visas or seek to study Hebrew.

It said the recent ban on the importation of matzoh for Passover and the arrest of Iosif Begun of Moscow, a mathematician, on charges of “parasitism” were “a cause of grave concern not only for his fate but for the fate of hundreds of others who, like Dr. Begun, have been refused an exit permit to Israel and in consequence of their application, were dismissed from their work.”

The communique added, “It is indeed gravely disturbing that this recent outburst of anti-Semitism has taken place after the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975 to which the Soviet Union adhered.” It urged the Soviet government “to call off this campaign, to allow applicants for an exit permit to leave the Soviet Union, to free all prisoners of conscience and to stop the harassment of those who study the Hebrew language and promote Jewish culture.”