Postal authorities said today they had “disposed of” matzos sent to the Soviet Embassy for Jews in the Soviet Union and refused by the Embassy. Alfred Huffer, communications officer for metropolitan Washington, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that on authorization from the national level of the Postal Service, the matzos were removed from the basement of the main Post Office last night and “disposed of like any perishable material.” Huffer declined to name the authorizing officers or describe the process of disposition.
Robert C. Kohler of Newark, director of the New Jersey regional office of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, which had sponsored the matzo campaign to help draw attention to the plight of Soviet Jews, said yesterday that “in excess of 20,000 pounds” of matzo had been mailed to the Embassy by groups in Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Delaware, plus some 600 pounds from Greensboro, North Carolina, and other points.
A spokesman for Sen. Harrison A. Williams, Jr. (D. N.J.) told the JTA today that the legislator had asked the Postal Service for a “full explanation” of why the matzo was “destroyed.” The spokesman, Walter Ramsey, said the Service had told Williams only yesterday that he would be advised in advance of a decision, but Ramsey declined to attribute deviousness to the Service’s prompt disposal of the matzo. “I wouldn’t want to draw any conclusions,” he said. Asked how 20,000 pounds of matzo could be so quickly disposed of without attracting attention, Ramsey said Postal officials had told him the total was 8000 pounds.
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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.
