Justice Goldberg Hits USSR Mistreatment of Jews; Urges ‘rights Court’

Establishment of an International Court of Human Rights, to enforce the “essential civil rights” of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, was urged tonight by Associate Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, of the United States Supreme Court.

Justice Goldberg spoke before 500 educators, scholars and leaders of American business and labor here, when he and nine other Jewish communal leaders received the annual Louis Marshall Award at a dinner conducted by the National Patrons Society of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court Justice received an honorary degree from the Seminary.

Declaring that the unimplemented Universal Declaration of Human Rights “amounts only to a manifesto, a statement of ideals and not binding law.” Justice Goldberg said that, “sadly enough,” the United States and other Western nations had been in alliance with Communist bloc countries in objecting to “the setting up of international machinery for implementation on the untenable grounds that this would tend to undermine the sovereignty and independence of states.” He said “the time is overdue” for establishment of the international court, and that the absence of the court “increases the obligation of all who believe in the dignity of man to protest the denial of human rights whenever or wherever it occurs.”

Justice Goldberg stressed the mistreatment of Jews in the Soviet Union as a graphic case in point, and emphasized that evidence of discrimination against Jews there is “overwhelming.” He pointed to the closing of synagogues, restrictions on private worship, virtual prohibition of Jewish schools, the condemning of the ancient Jewish cemetery in Kiev, vilification of Jews in the Soviet press, and other instances of intolerance.

NOTES THAT 60% OF DEATH SENTENCES FOR ECONOMIC CRIMES INVOLVE JEWS

“No law-abiding citizen of any nation, and particularly no judge,” the jurist stated, “can urge that any person or group is immune from the equal application of any nation’s law. But when 60 per cent of those executed in the Soviet Union for economic crimes are Jews, who comprise only a little more than one per cent of the population, then the belief naturally is fostered that Jews are receiving unequal treatment under Soviet law,”

Justice Goldberg said that, in appealing for an end to Soviet discrimination against Jews, he was aware our own nation’s record “is not perfect,” and that “we all too often fall short of realizing the great ideals of human liberty and equality embodied in our great Declaration of Human Rights. I am also mindful, however, that our Government policy is directed to ending rather than extending discrimination.”

The nine leaders who with Justice Goldberg received the Louis Marshall Memorial Medal for their “continuing effort to further the spiritual, cultural and ethical well-being of the Jewish community,” were Charles Avnet of Long Beach, N.Y.; Irving Benjamin of Newton, Mass.; Samuel H. Daroff of Philadelphia, Peter I. Feinberg of Great Neck, N. Y.; Julius Fligelman of Los Angeles, Morris B. Kaufman of Toronto, Canada; David S. Malkov of Chicago, Benjamin M. Reeves of New York City and Morris A. Shenker of St. Louis.

The Medal, named for the late constitutional lawyer who served as chairman of the Seminary’s board of directors from 1904 until his death in 1929, was conferred upon the recipients by Dr. Louis Finkelstein, chancellor of the Seminary. They were presented for the medal by Alan M. Stroock, new president of the Corporation of the Seminary.