Some 40 people picketed here today in front of the Polish United Nations Mission building, calling upon the Polish government to release Leopold Trepper, the anti-Nazi, Jewish war hero whose request for an exit visa has been denied six times. Today’s rally also commemorated V-E Day–May 8, 1945. The United States Trepper Defense Committee, sponsor of the rally, tried unsuccessfully to deliver a letter addressed to Edward Gierek, the first Secretary of the United Polish Workers Party on behalf of Trepper.
The letter read in part: “In denying six times Trepper’s request to emigrate from Poland, your government…is violating every humanitarian principle to which you are signatory or adherent. Trepper’s desire to emigrate is his basic human right.” During World War II Trepper headed the Red Orchestra, a Soviet, anti-Nazi intelligence network and played an important role in the anti-Nazi resistance movement. Trepper, who is now 69 and reportedly ill, wants to be reunited with his family and live in Israel.
Demonstrators carried placards calling on Egemius Kulaga, Poland’s Ambassador to the UN and chairman of the UN Committee for Human Rights, to adhere to the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights.
(In London, a demonstration was held today to draw public attention to Trepper’s plight. Demonstrators marched from the House of Commons to the Cenotaph in Whitehall where they laid a wreath of red orchids in memory of the members of the Red Orchestra.)
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