Jewish Women’s Groups Ask Bush to Place Soviet Jewry Issue on UN Assembly Agenda

The Leadership Conference of National Jewish Women’s Organizations, today asked the US Ambassador to the United Nations, George Bush, to place the issue of Soviet Jewry on the agenda of the current session of the UN General Assembly. The appeal, sent in a telegram, arose out of a meeting last Thursday between State Department officials and heads of the nine national Jewish women’s organizations that make up the Leadership Conference. At the meeting the women urged US intercession with Soviet authorities on behalf of Jewish women prisoners in the USSR. The telegram asked the US Mission to the UN to “exercise every influence and use every opportunity to underscore before the nations of the world the serious plight of Soviet Jewry.”

The telegram to Ambassador Bush added: “We ask the representatives of our government to assert moral leadership in assuring this oppressed minority the opportunity to live in dignity and peace.” Mrs. Howard Levine of West Orange, N.J., chairman of the Leadership Conference Soviet Jewry Committee and president of the National Women’s Division of the American Jewish Congress said the State Department meeting was a “positive” one. The appeal, signed by Mrs. Charles Snitow of Scarsdale, chairman of the Leadership Conference and cochairman of the national Governing Council of AJCongress, said that “intercession by our government can play a crucial role in helping to alleviate the Soviet Jews’ plight.” A copy of the telegram was sent to Mrs. Rita E. Hauser, US Representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights, with a letter asking her to continue her activities in the name of the US government on behalf of the Jews of the Soviet Union.