A crowd estimated at several thousand massed outside United Nations headquarters this morning to denounce the “ransom” fees imposed on educated Jews wishing to leave the Soviet Union as Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko addressed the General Assembly inside. The demonstration and rally at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, organized by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, was addressed by New York political and civic leaders.
The specific demand, enunciated by the speakers and echoed on signs and banners carried by the crowd, was that the US refrain from negotiating improved trade relations with the Soviet Union until Moscow removes the “price tag” from Jewish academicians and intellectuals seeking to emigrate. “Mr. Nixon, Grant the Soviet Union Most Unfavored Nation Status,” one sign read. Another said, “No Barter with Slave Traders.” A third sign stated “Mr. Gromyko is on the UN agenda; How about Soviet Jewry?”
At US Mission headquarters across the street from the UN building, 29 Jewish and non-Jewish clergymen and academicians chained themselves to the outdoor railing to symbolize the repressive nature of the Soviet “ransom” fees. That demonstration, also timed to coincide with Gromyko’s address, was not related to the one on the Plaza.
JEWS REDUCED TO OBJECTS
The larger rally was addressed by Reps. John Dow (D.N.Y.) and Peter Peyser (R.N.Y.), City Council President Sanford Garelik; Michael Mann, AFLCIO regional director; and Stanley Lowell, chairman of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry. Another speaker was the author, Elie Wiesel. Both Congressmen urged the withholding of trade benefits from the Soviet Union. Wiesel compared the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany because, “by putting a price tag on human heads it reduces them to objects and the only time that Jews were considered objects was during the holocaust.”
Sen. James Buckley (R.-Cons.N.Y.) sent a message to the rally stating that he strongly urged Nixon “to withhold from the Communist dominated nations the most favored nation status until, at the very least, all political blackmail against Soviet Jewry…comes to an end.” Lowell said that Gromyko and other Soviet leaders “have seriously misjudged the spirit of free men around the world and particularly in the US” by imposing the ransom fee. The imposition of the fees, Lowell added, “is more than a challenge, it is a test for all men of conscience.”
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