B’nai B’rith charged today that a Ukrainian representative at the United Nations, named this week as one of the recipients of the UN’s human rights award, had been “an unblushing apologist” for a much-publicized anti-Semitic book published with state approval in the Soviet Union.
Dr. William A. Wexler, B’nai B’rith president, deplored the United Nations’ selection of Prof. Peter Nedbailo among this year’s award winners, citing the Ukrainian delegate’s defense of “Judaism Without Embellishment,” a bitterly anti-Jewish diatribe written by Trofim Kichko, another Ukrainian and published in 1964 under the auspices of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Wexler noted that on March 15, 1964, Prof. Nedbailo defended the book and its cartoons at a session of the UN Commission on Human Rights. Three weeks later, the Soviet Communist Party ideological commission itself criticized the book as “likely to offend” for its anti-Semitism and the book was then withdrawn by Soviet authorities. Dr. Wexler said “it is particularly anomalous that Nedbailo’s name is included on a list with such eminent world citizens as the late Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and Prof. Rene Cassin.” He said this could only “debase the award’s significance and impeach the award significance .” Prof. Cassin is president of the Alliance Israelite Universelle.
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