Representatives of major world Jewish organizations testified today on anti-Jewish discrimination in a number of countries at hearings now being held here by a subcommission of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which is discussing a study on religious rights and practices.
The Jewish representatives charged that 20,000 Jewish orphans, survivors of families annihilated by the Nazis, are being brought up as Christians. They also referred to the suppression of Jewish culture in certain states, but without naming the Soviet Union directly. They also charged that Jordan has desecrated Jewish shrines. They demanded that the United Nations take immediate positive steps to eliminate such prosecutions.
Appearing before the UN body were Moses Moskowitz, representing the Consultative Council of Jewish Organizations–a group composed of the American Jewish Committee, Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Anglo-Jewish Association–and Dr. Isaac Lewin, representative of the World Agudas Israel Organization. Representatives of other world Jewish organizations fighting for human rights and against religious discrimination are also expected to appear before the subcommittee.
Dr. Lewin, who voiced the complaint that Jewish orphans are being brought up as Christians, requested the United Nations to look into this situation. He called upon the United Nations to recognize “freedom of children to maintain the religion of their deceased parents.”
Dr. Lewin also reported in detail to the subcommission on the desecrations in Jordan. These, he charged, are being practiced systematically at the grave of Rachel, near Bethlehem. “The entrance to the shrine.” he stated, “has been destroyed. On the walls, one can read blasphemies in the Arab and English languages. Signs of the Nazi swastika are engraved. Around the shrine, all possible junk and dirt have been spread. The profanation is complete.” He told the subcommittee that “such discrimination against the Jewish religion calls to heaven for an immediate remedy.”
Mr. Moskowitz urged the United Nations to condemn not only direct anti-religious discrimination but those of an indirect type as well. He insisted that, throughout the world, “the police power of the state must be used against the groups which threaten freedom of religion, and not against their victims, even when the former are more powerful than the latter.”
Then, without naming the Soviet Union. Mr. Moskowitz attacked “certain states” where “antagonism to religion stems not only from the occasional identification of religion with former rulers, but from the desire of the state to subordinate all spheres of human activity to central control, and eliminate all free expressions of the human spirit, of which religion is one of the most important.”
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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.
