Jewish Leaders Urge Nixon, UN to Protest ‘latest Outrage’

Reacting to the tragic news of the conviction and sentencing of the nine Soviet Jewish defendants; Jewish leaders appealed today to the Nixon administration, the United Nations and free peoples and their governments to protest this latest outrage against Soviet Jews. Philip E. Hoffman, president of the American Jewish Committee, asserted that “So long as Russia’s Jews are not permitted either to exercise their basic right to leave a country when they so wish or to live full lives as Jews within the Soviet Union together with other Soviet citizens, so long should the world realize that freedom has been reduced for us all.” Hoffman said the trial was held and the sentences decreed “for matters of conscience,” since “the world knows that they (the defendants) have been guilty of only one thing–expressing the overwhelming desire to live full Jewish lives.” The actions of the Soviet court, he said, were “clear violations of basic human rights.” Hoffman called on the Nixon administration, the UN “and all others concerned with the protection of the basic rights of individuals and minority groups to act immediately against this latest outrage.”

Maurice A. Weinstein, chairman of the B’nai B’rith International Council, declared: “We look for free peoples everywhere and their governments to react with protest to the Soviet Union’s unyielding policy of intimidation and harassment of Jews who are being denied their fundamental human rights.” Weinstein added that, “The cruel and callous punishment of those who sought nothing more than to live a free and meaningful Jewish life tragically confirms that Soviet leadership has yet to take to heart the world outcry provoked by the first Leningrad trial last December.” Rabbi Israel Miller, president of the American Zionist Federation, cabled President Nixon that “We of the AZF are profoundly shocked and outraged at the severity of the sentences imposed today upon the nine Jewish defendants at the Leningrad trials.” Rabbi Miller said that “the secrecy surrounding the trial and the harshness of their punishment in relation to their alleged offenses is inimical to our 700,000 members, who subscribe to the traditional democratic concepts of due process of law.”

The defendants, Rabbi Miller continued, “were not common criminals but highly respected professionals whose sole motivation was the desire to emigrate to Israel, a right proclaimed publicly by Soviet Premier (Alexsei N.) Kosygin several years ago and guaranteed by the UN Declaration on Human Rights.” The AZF leader appealed to Nixon to “utilize your good offices to intercede with the Soviet government in behalf of these dedicated patriots whose only ‘crime’ was to seek the freedom and opportunity for self-expression and fulfillment that we Americans so richly enjoy.” Herman L. Weisman, president of the Zionist Organization of America, declared the Leningrad convictions are “evidence that justice cannot prevail in the midst of Soviet imperialistic ambition and persecution. This impels us to urge our government to make its voice heard in behalf of Soviet Jews who seek to live as Jews and as free men.” Weisman said that this latest “Soviet injustice emerges as an ugly echo of Russian anti-Semitism which existed under the Czars.” The defendants’ “only crime…was desiring to live as free and proud Jews in Israel,” the Zionist leader said, yet “their punishment is a living death in Soviet prison camps.”