A national assembly of Jewish community leaders appealed to the White House today to intervene in behalf of Jewish activists rounded up and jailed by Soviet authorities in advance of President Nixon’s summit visit to Moscow. The appeal, delivered in Washington to Presidential Counselor Leonard Garment urged that President Nixon make “direct representation” to Communist Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev to end the arrests “since they are obviously linked to your visit.” (See related stories on Page 3.)
The appeal was signed by Stanley H. Lowell, chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry and announced by Lowell at the annual plenary here of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council. The Council’s nine national organizations and 97 local community councils adopted a policy statement reaffirming their support of the Jackson Amendment. The statement said that the amendment “serves not only as direct pressure” on the USSR to change its policies “but strengthens the hand” of the Administration in seeking “dependable assurances” from Soviet leaders that they will do so. Lowell said that the White House had also been given a current report on Soviet Jews, including the names and details on some 1600 “hard core” cases who have lost their employment or suffered other “official harassments” because they had applied for an exit visa.
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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.
