A special delegation of Jewish community leaders from upper New York State cities — Albany, Schenectady, Troy and Buffalo — presented key Congressional figures with a petition bearing the signature of 2,000 Holocaust survivors and their supporters that demanded “immediate and aggressive” deportation from the United States of “all individuals found guilty of Nazi war crimes.”
The petitioners — state and local leaders of Hadassah, B’nai B’rith, the Greater Albany Jewish Federation, and Holocaust Survivors and Friends in Pursuit of Justice — further insisted that “proven Nazi war criminals living among us be returned promptly to the soil on which they committed their crimes or handed over to concerned countries requesting their extradition.” The group cited such outstanding requests from Yugoslavia and Israel.
Shelly Shapiro, former Colonie, N.Y. Hadassah president and representing the Holocaust Survivors and Friends, stressed the need, in presenting the petition to the Congressional figures last Thursday, to “defend the (Justice Department’s) Office of Special Investigations (OSI) from the massive attacks from far right emigre groups, the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby, and the terrorist cult controlled by Lyndon La Rouche, Jr.”
Their “common trait,” she said, “is a hatred of the Jews and a determination to eliminate the OSI in its just pursuit of Nazi war criminals living among us.” Most of Shapiro’s family were murdered in the Treblinka death camp.
The petitioning organizations also called on Congress to increase the budget of the OSI so that “it may more expeditiously accomplish its goals.” The petitioners presented their “grass roots” demands to such prominent Congressional figures as Senators Alfonse D’Amato (R. NY), Daniel Moynihan (D. NY), Daniel Inouye (D. Hawaii), Robert Dole (R. Kansas); and Rep. Jack Kemp (R. NY). Shapiro told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “the Senators and Congressmen received us with positive concern, assuring us of support for our progam.”
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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.
