Rep. Edward I. Koch (D. N.Y.) and 15 other Democratic and Republican House members have warned Frank Shakespeare, director of the United States Information Agency, that they might vote against appropriations for the Voice of America broadcasts to the Soviet Union if the agency refuses to broadcast in Yiddish. The warning was in a letter written and signed by Koch with the appended signatures of the 15 other Congressmen.
The signers stated they were “dissatisfied with USIA’s response to the requests made many times to your agency.” The letter, dated May 3. was part of a statement made on the House floor by Koch, who declared that USIA’s “opposition” to the broadcasts “has not been predicated on any technical problem but rather on policy.” Shakespeare has said that technical considerations were prohibitive.
“Those familiar with the plight of the Jews in the Soviet Union,” Koch wrote, “know that their spirit will be buoyed by such an acknowledgment by the United States of this national language (Yiddish) no longer taught in the Soviet Union while other groups are encouraged to learn in their national language. Even so, great numbers of Jews in the Soviet Union hold fast to their mother tongue–the Yiddish language–not with standing the efforts of the Soviet Union to engage in cultural genocide.”
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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.
