Mrs. Hauser Says U.S. Administration Gives High Priority to Welfare of Soviet Jews

Mrs. Rita E. Hauser, U.S. Representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights said the Nixon administration is greatly concerned with the welfare of Soviet Jews “now suffering many deprivations.” In a letter dated July 31 to Representative Richard L. Ottinger, Democrat of New York, whose text was made public today by the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, Mrs. Hauser said she had raised the issue of Soviet “mistreatment of its Jews” and their right to emigrate to Israel in both the Human Rights Commission and at the last session of the General Assembly. Mrs. Hauser’s letter was in reply to Mr. Ottinger’s letter of July 28 which, at the request of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, transmitted copies of two petitions that had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union. The petitions, addressed to the Human Rights Commission, had been signed by nine Leningrad Jews who sought Commission help to aid them and their families emigrate to Israel. In her letter, Mrs. Hauser wrote “I have persisted in expressing our nation’s interest in and concern for Jews and other oppressed minority groups in the Soviet Union in the face of strenuous Soviet opposition to our initiatives.” She said Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Senators Jacob K. Javits and Charles E. Goodell, Republicans of New York, have all assisted in bringing this situation before the people of “our state, our nation and before world public opinion.” Mr. Outinger had deplored the fact that the UN and the U.S. had not given high priority to the matter of dealing with the “spiritual and cultural genocide aimed at the Jews in the Soviet Union,” and urged all “possible diplomatic representations” to the Soviet Union to relax the barriers which now prevent emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel.