An appeal for justice for Soviet Jewry, written by a Jew in Kiev who gave it to a Detroit social worker visiting Kiev and which was published in the Jewish News of Detroit in 1964, has been reprinted in a Soviet newspaper as the basis for a Soviet denunciation of Zionism, the Jewish News reported this week.
The Detroit Jewish weekly, in reporting on the development, said it was withholding the name of the social worker, just as it did in printing the Kiev Jew’s statement on October 23, 1964. The reproduction of the Detroit Jewish News article appeared in Radianska Ukrainia, a Kiev daily newspaper, which, in calling the matter to the attention of its readers, indicated that the social worker had been trailed throughout her visit, that the Kiev Jew had been identified and hinted that he and his wife not only were interrogated but may also have suffered some form of persecution.
The Kiev letter, in the form of an appeal to Soviet authorities to eradicate anti-Semitism, allow Jews to have normal cultural and religious expression, and to emigrate to Israel if they so wished, was the Kiev writer’s way of seeking to inform the Western world of the conditions suffered by Soviet Jewry, the Jewish weekly noted.
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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.
