Jews, Non-jews Urged to Join in Appeal to Soviet Government to Let Jews Go

Mayor Dominick N. Assaro issued a call yesterday at a Soviet Jewry rally here to “all men of good will, Jews and non-Jews, throughout the world, to join in the appeal to the authorities in the USSR: Let My People Go.” Speaking to a youthful crowd of several hundred persons, Assaro noted that several members of his city government were, in their private roles as citizens, active in the Soviet Jewry movement. He pointed out that Utica’s Human Resources Commissioner, James Senor, is chairman of the Utica Jewish Community’s Committee on Soviet Jewry while Judge Harold Hymes is president of the Jewish Community Council which also works actively on behalf of Soviet Jewry. At the rally, sponsored by the youth chapters of Temples Beth El and Emanuel, Assaro declared: “We stand with hands and shoulders together because other human beings are undergoing a relentless persecution and a heartless denial of their human rights.” The Mayor added that “We must continue to protest that a nation’s borders are not prison walls and that those who wish to leave should be allowed to do so. We must continue to seek to stir the conscience of mankind to the naked anti-Semitism of the Russian rulers and the terrorizing treatment of Russian Jews.”