A Milwaukee Jew who, as a youngster, was a classmate of Leonid Brezhnev, first secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, has written nine letters to Brezhnev appealing to him to halt anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union but has received no reply, the syndicated Drew Pearson column reported here today.
The column, written by Jack Anderson, Mr. Pearson’s associate, reported that the letters had been sent to Brezhnev by Nathaniel Krughlak who had studied with Brezhnev in a schoolhouse at a Ukrainian factory town known as Kamenskoye, later renamed Dneprodzerzhinsk. According to Mr. Anderson, Mr. Kruglak had “told his story to the State Department.”
After failing to receive a reply from Brezhnev to his first eight letters, Mr. Kruglak wrote to the Soviet leader; “Public opinion here and in Europe is condemning your administration for persecuting 3,000,000 Jews in the USSR.”
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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.
