One hundred sixty-nine American educators, creative artists and other intellectual leaders and more than 1300 college teachers have signed a statement expressing “shock” at “the campaign of vilification, intimidation and coercion” of Soviet Jewry by the Soviet regime. They described the policy as “an irrational anti-Semitic campaign” based on “transparently specious accusations.” They called for equal rights for Soviet Jews and the right of emigration. Among the 169 notables–Jewish and non-Jewish, white and black–were Hannah Arendt. Saul Bellow. Theodore Bikel, Ralph Ellison, Michael Harrington, Rabbi Abraham J, Heschel, New York Mayor John V. Lindsay. Bernard Malamud, Arthur Miller, Chaim Potok, A. Philip Randolph. Bayard Rustin, Dore Schary. Isaac Bashevis Singer and Cleveland Mayor Carl B. Stokes. The statement was issued jointly by the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry and the Conference on the Status of Soviet Jews. Moshe Decter, executive secretary of the latter organization, noted at a news conference that the Kremlin’s linking of anti-Soviet protests to American imperialism was disproved by the presence among the signers of the declaration of a number of critics of United States foreign policy. Rabbi Herschel Schacter, chairman of the American Jewish Conference, said his organization was in “constant communication” with U.S. officials on the matter of Soviet Jewry. But he added that attempts at redress through the UN had so far proved “frustrating.”
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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.
