Senator James L. Buckley (Cons.-R., N.Y.), disclosed today that the Voice of America will begin broadcasting next month programs he described would be of “special interest to Jewish listeners in the Soviet Union.” The broadcasts will not be in Yiddish. According to Buckley, the broadcasts will take place each Sunday morning at 7:15 am Moscow time and will be rebroadcast each Monday evening at 11:15 pm Moscow time beginning Dec. 12. They will include items of religious, cultural and political interest to Soviet Jewry.
Buckley reported these changes in the VOA programming to the Soviet Union at a mass rally on behalf of Soviet Jews in White Plains, N.Y., sponsored by the Westchester Conference on Soviet Jewry. An advanced text of his speech was released earlier in Washington.
After the VOA, queried by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, said that the broadcasts would be in the Russian Language only and not in Yiddish, Buckley observed that while his goal of Yiddish broadcasts has not been attained yet, the special broadcasts has not been attained yet, the special programs in Russian represented an advance on behalf of Soviet Jewry and that he would continue to press for Yiddish programs. In his prepared address, Buckley also said that he has urged Nixon to place the Soviet’s treatment of Jews and the denials of their right of emigration “squarely on the agenda for his coming talks in Moscow.”
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