Hartke Sends Petitions to Dobrynin Urging Kosygin to Permit Jewish Emigration

Sen. Vance Hartke, Democrat of Indiana, sent Soviet Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin copies of a petition with more than 1,500 signatures calling on Premier Aleksei Kosygin to permit Soviet Jews to emigrate. The petition, sent to the Soviet Embassy by special messenger, had been gathered by the Purdue University Committee on Soviet Jewry, an ad hoc group formed through the B’ nai B’rith Hillel Foundation on the Indiana campus. It had been presented to Hartke by Dr. Gary Moroff, a former Purdue graduate student who is the committee’s chairman, and Dr. Alfred Jospe, Hillel Foundations’ national director of program and resources and former Hillel director at Indiana University. Students and faculty at Purdue, delegates to the recent convention of the Indiana State Association of B’nai B’rith and residents of Lafayette, Ind., were among its signers. In a letter accompanying the petition. Hartke said American Jews have expressed “grave concern” over the condition of Jews in the Soviet Union. “I personally share this concern,” Hartke said in his letter to Dobrynin, adding: ” I trust you will convey our message to your Premier. World public opinion awaits his decision.” The petition declared that it is ” impossible to live with pride and dignity as Jews in the Soviet Union,” deplored the arrests of Jews who had appealed to Soviet and Western leaders for the right to emigrate and called on Premier Kosygin to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights-of which the Soviet Union is a signator. “We appeal to you (to) uphold international obligations and grant what you yourself regard as a just request,” the petition said. “Set the prisoners free! Let those who wish to go do so!”