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New York Huge Mass Rally to Protest Today Soviet Policy on Jews

June 3, 1965
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Thousands of Jews are expected to pack Madison Square Garden tomorrow night for the “Rally for Soviet Jewry” called to protest the suppression of the religious and cultural freedoms of Russian Jews.

Senators Jacob K. Javits and Robert F. Kennedy will speak at the protest, which is sponsored by 39 affiliates of major Jewish organizations operating as the New York Conference on Soviet Jewry. The rally has been highlighted by neighborhood meetings and marches held under various organizational auspices in the city.

(Two Soviet Jewish scientists–Dr. Lev Landau, Nobel Prize winner physicist, and Prof. Yevsei Liberman, leading Soviet economist–published today a letter in the New York Times, cabled from Moscow, saying that the Soviet Jews regard the Madison Square meeting as “a provocation where without us, without our representatives, it is intended to discuss a non-existent problem.” The two scientists asserted that “all the problems that may arise here (in the Soviet Union) we decide ourselves in the fraternal family of the USSR peoples.”)

In addition to the two senators, there will be also other speakers who will represent government, industry, labor, religion and the arts, including Dr. Buell Gallagher, president of the City College of New York, Socialist leader Norman Thomas, and Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, past president of the New York Board of Rabbis. Participants will be introduced by Dr. Joachim Prinz, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Morris Abram, U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and president of the American Jewish Committee, and David Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

The Jewish Labor Committee conducted a mass public campaign today throughout the garment district of Manhattan to stimulate maximum attendance at the protest rally. Sound trucks toured the district and tables were set up at ten different corners at which petitions were signed protesting the Soviet suppression of Jewish culture and religion.

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