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Rosenwald Offers Three-point Program to Check Soviet Campaign

March 2, 1953
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The Soviet campaign against Jews, although labeled “anti-Zionist,” can have serious anti-Semitic repercussions in Eastern Europe because of the historic, latent anti-Semitism in that part of the world, Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, said in a statement issued here today.

Describing the current Soviet campaign as deserving “the sharpest condemnation of the entire world, ” Mr. Rosenwald’s statement also offered a three-point program designed to mitigate the effects of that campaign. The “three positive steps” of the program call for:

“1. Wider publicity concerning the facts of Soviet persecutions of all religious and other minority groups and exposure of the sinister political objectives which the Kremlin hopes to advance through the dramatized anti-Zionist character of the latest phase of this more general oppression. These subjects would appear to be proper for discussion in the United Nations, before its Human Rights Commission and other bodies.

“2. Giving such American economic and other aid as is required by all the nations of the Middle East which are now a prime target of Soviet psychological warfare. The criteria for granting this aid should be applied similarly to all nations involved. The Council reiterates its long-standing recommendation that the Middle East must be regarded as a whole.

“3. Revising and liberalising the existing immigration laws of the United States, or enacting new, emergency legislation, to waive the present restrictive requirements for all bona fide refugees from Communist terror, particularly those fleeing from Eastern to Western Germany.”

“Exploitation” of the current anti-Zionist phase of the Soviet campaign of general oppression to urge the mass exodus of 2,500,000 Jews from Iron Curtain countries and their immigration to Israel alone was described by Mr. Rosenwald as “unrealistic” and “irresponsible.”

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