The Soviet Government’s treatment of the country’s Jews was sharply condemned here today at a conference of intellectuals from 12 Latin American countries in which the Soviet’s anti-Jewish policy was described as “cultural genocide, ” and the situation was compared to the plight of Jewry under the Spanish inquisition.
Some 50 delegates including writers, novelists, university rectors and professors are attending the meeting devoted to the situation of Soviet Jewry. Austregesilo de Atahude, president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, called upon the Soviet Union to implement its own constitution in preserving Jewish cultural and religious rights.
German Arciniegas, a Colombian writer and diplomat, deploring the discrimination in the Soviet Union against Jewish culture and the Yiddish language, declared: “Jewish culture obviously surpasses that of Uzbeks, Yakuts and Usitans. Why with one hand stimulate the development of stammering languages and with the other deprive the Jews of their schools? Why interrupt a multisecular chain of culture which proved so useful to the progress of the Western World and was not foreign to the very formation of the Soviet State? Yiddish is not, as the Soviet Encyclopedia states, a dead language. It is what it ever was–a language of faith.”
Stressing the importance to the Jewish people of the cultural contributions of Russian Jewry, Senator Aron Steinbruch, vice-president of the Confederation of Brazilian Jewish Organizations, told the delegates: “If the Land of Israel was the cradle of the ancient Jewish people, the Russian land was the birthplace of almost everything which is today important in the Jewish world. In territories now part of the Soviet Union were born almost all movements which impressed their mark on today’s Judaism. We think of what Russian Judaism meant to the Jewish people and what its disappearance might signify.”
Other speakers addressing the conference included Dr. Isaac Goldenberg, president of the DAIA, national representative organization of Argentine Jewry, who said that “morally and spiritually, the important Jewish minority is being stifled.”
In a message to the conference, former Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek said that he joined the delegates in urging the Soviet Government to grant full rights to Jews. He declared: “As a citizen of a nation where Jews enjoy full freedom, I appeal to the Government of the USSR that they reformulate their policies with regard to the problem.”
Other messages were received by the conference from Artur Illia, president elect of Argentina; Carlos Lleras Restrepo, presidential candidate of Colombia; Rafael Caldera. presidential candidate of Venezuela; Felipe Gil, Uruguayan Interior Minister; Waldo Frank, American writer; Emilio Fortes Gil, former President of Mexico. Ignacio Chaves, rector of the University of Mexico; Eduarro Santos, former President of Colombia; and Romulo Gallegos, former President of Venezuela.
A delegation representing the conference attempted to obtain an interview with the Soviet charge d’affaires here, Andrei A. Fomin, but the delegates were told he could not receive them.
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