The meeting here today of 60 Jewish leaders has decided to call for an extraordinary assembly of all Jewish communities to plan intensified and expanded efforts on behalf of the freedom and the basic rights of Soviet Jewry. The Jewish leaders who met to study this question unanimously decided that such a conference will be held in Brussels next February.
The one-day meeting coordinated plans and heard reports on the harsh new methods adopted in recent months by the Soviet authorities and directed against Jews, especially those who seek to emigrate. The representatives at the meeting decided it was imperative to step up world-wide efforts on their behalf.
The second Brussels World Conference of Jewish Communities on Soviet Jewry, will, like its predecessor five years ago, bring together representative Jewish leadership from every continent and from major Jewish international and national organizations.
Jewish Agency Acting Chairman Leon Dulzin said after today’s meeting that the problem of Soviet Jewry has united the Jewish people like no other problem before. He said that Soviet policy on Jewish emigration will show whether the Helsinki agreement is a one-sided agreement or something to be respected by both sides, East and West. Dulzin stressed that the Helsinki declaration clearly specifies the right of free emigration from the USSR.
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