Some 4000 persons gathered in Amsterdam’s $51 year-old Sephardic Synagogue yesterday, half of them non-Jews, to participate in pre-Passover services and a mass rally on behalf of Soviet Jewry. The meeting was followed by a torchlight parade to Schouwburg, the place where Dutch Jews were herded by the Nazis for deportation during World War II. The assembled throng sang Hatikvah (Hope) Israel’s national anthem, and heard a reading in Dutch of Yevtushenko’s famous poem, Babi Yar, dealing with the Nazi massacre of Jews in the Ukraine. The Sephardic Synagogue was packed with the largest crowd it ever held since it was built in 1619. according to Jewish community leaders. The rally was presided over by Prof: L. Kukenheim Rector of the University of Leiden. It was addressed by Simon Wiesenthal, of Vienna, the archivist of Nazi war crimes, by Sir Banett Janner. British MP and Dr. Pieter Koets, Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam. The gathering unanimously adopted a resolution urging Soviet authorities to let Russian Jews emigrate to Israel if they so desire and to grant them the same rights enjoyed by other ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union. The resolution stressed the pleas of Russian Jews to be allowed to reunite with their families in Israel and other countries. The event was sponsored by four Dutch Jewish congregations. It was announced from the pulpits of various churches in Holland whose pastors urged their congregants to participate.
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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.
