Lookstein, at Nyana Annual Meeting, Urges Continued Protests of ‘danger’ Facing Jews in the Soviet U

The vice chairman of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, said here that continued restrictions on Soviet Jewish emigration and the oppression of Soviet Jewish cultural activities “places them in terrible danger. “

Addressing some 75 persons at the 34th annual meeting of the New York Association for New Americans (NYANA) last Sunday, Lookstein said that “Jews in Russia are neither permitted to live Jewishly nor to emigrate to lands where they might live as they wish. The resulting pressure places them in terrible danger.”

He added: “To protect our fellow Jews in the Soviet Union, we will protest every outrage. We must let the Soviet government know that we will not tolerate criminal conduct … we will not be silent … we will not be still in the face of the threat to the lives and security of Jews in the Soviet Union.”

The NYANA, founded in 1949, is the principal Jewish agency responsible for resettling Jewish refugees in the New York metropolitan area. The annual meeting elected Paul Alter of New York as president for the year 1983-1984. Also, the meeting paid particular tribute to “its professional personnel who have maintained the highest standards helping newly arrived immigrants to rebuild their lives. “

11,430 REFUGEES AIDED

Arthur Chernick, who served as NYANA president from 1980-1983, and who was elected chairperson of the resettlement agency’s executive committee, said that from 1980 through 1982, the NYANA aided 11,430 refugees, including 1,000 Indochinese refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia at the request of the U.S.

Chernick also said that in the last ten years, “NYANA helped more than 40,000 Russian Jews to establish new lives in New York City. “

In the past 34 years, the NYANA, according to Chernick, helped more than 238,000 Jews, including survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, and refugees fleeing oppression in Hungary, Egypt, Rumania, Syria, Iran, Czechoslavakia, Poland and other areas, who were resettled here by the agency.

From 1980 through 1982, NYANA’s assistance program for refugees cost more than $26 million. The funds were provided, according to the NYANA, by the national United Jewish Appeal and a federal government block grant made available through the Council of Jewish Federations.