No Confirmation That There Are Jewish Pows in North Vietnam

Rabbinical leaders here said today they could not confirm the statement in Paris yesterday by Rabbi Schulem Rubin of New York that there are 30 Jewish prisoners of war in North Vietnam. Rabbi Rubin, of Young Israel of Pelham Parkway, said he had gotten the figure from North Vietnamese representatives to the Paris peace talks who rejected his request to conduct Passover services for Jewish POWs.

Rabbi Maurice Lamm, an official of the Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy of the Jewish Welfare Board, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that according to Maj. Gen. Will Hyatt, chief of chaplains of the United States Army, there was no information on the number of Jewish POWs, if any, held by Hanoi. Rabbi Lamm said Hyatt had advised him that the Army knows of the “desire and interest” of chaplains of all faiths to visit the POWs, but that no progress on the issue has been made with the North Vietnamese.

Hyatt added, Rabbi Lamm reported, that “all possible resources” to aid prisoners will be “immediately available” once a breakthrough is reached. Rabbi Lamm told the JTA: “No action has been taken (by the Jewish chaplains); no action has been requested (by Washington). The attempt has not been made. There’s been no breakthrough, to our knowledge.” The Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy is government-sponsored.

Rabbi Wolfe Kelman of the Rabbinical Assembly of America said his organization also had not sought chaplaincy aid to any Jewish soldiers who might be prisoners in North Vietnam. “I’ve never thought that this was a viable possibility,” he explained, adding: “There’s one way of not getting it done, and that’s to make press statements about it.”