An international symposium on anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union stressed today that this policy has now seeped into everyday life and has contaminated such sectors as literature, science and the media. The symposium met here for a two-day special session under the chairmanship of Leon Dulzin, chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency Executives and chairman of the Brussels Conference on Soviet Jewry. Participants included two Nobel Prize winners and Italian Communist Senator, Umberto Terracini.
The symposium, which included 31personalities from 12 countries, called on the Soviet government to out an end” to anti-Semitic propaganda and to stop discriminating against its Jewish citizens. Terracini told a press conference today that Soviet anti-Semitism serves a double purpose: to convince the Arab countries of its sincerity and convince its own citizens that Russia’s Middle East policy is moral and valid.
Earlier Dulzin told a press conference that no is due to meet later this week in the United States with representatives of HIAS and the joint Distribution Committee to try and find a solution to the problem of the Soviet emigrant-drop-outs who chose not to go to Israel but settled else where. Dulzin said that emigration from the USSR has in creased four-Fold during the last few months but that the proportion of drop-outs is larger than ever before
According to the latest figures, he said, 60 percent in February and 71 percent for the first not of March decided not to go to Israel The Jewish Agency chairman said that anti-Israel propaganda in the Soviet Union was partially to blame for these figures.
In his presentation at the symposium, Dulzin said, “We are gathered here, not to seek pretexts for conflict with the Soviet authorities, but to report facts which should be recognized and acted upon. It is true that recently there has been an increase in the number of exit visas that the ###ei authorities have been granting, and we acknowledge and appreciate this new development. For the Jews in the Soviet Union, in spite of their fear, are lining up in emigration offices in Minsk and Odessa, in Czemowitz and Kishinev, and in Dervant and Leningrad. The number of requests for affidavits from relatives in Israel has reached unprecedented dimensions.”
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