An official of the World Jewish Congress conceded today that the organization’s efforts to secure full minority rights for Soviet Jewry have failed so far. Dr. Gerhart Riegner, general secretary of the WJC said the time had come for a “profound reappraisal of our policy toward the Soviet authorities.”
Dr. Riegner said that would be one of the main topics at the meeting of the WJC’s executive which opens here on Jan. 7. The Jewish communities in 65 countries will be represented at the parley, including delegations from Rumania and Yugoslavia.
Dr. Riegner said another major topic will be the widening generation gap and how to cope with it. The WJC will also take up Arab propaganda activities which have assumed not only an anti-Israel but an anti-Jewish cast. Premier Golda Meir is expected to participate in the discussion of world Jewry and its relationship to Israel.
Previously, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Jewish Congress, told Israeli editors that large-scale emigration of Russian Jews to Israel might be the most important and most desirable solution. But he said, of immediate importance were demands that Soviet Jews be given the right to freedom of religion, freedom of education and freedom to practice their own culture. Dr. Goldmann said he feared that Jewish youth had no common language with the Jewish establishment and may be lost to Jewry.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
