The conspiracy trial of seven Jewish Defense Leaguers in connection with the April 22, 1971, bombing of the Soviet Union’s Amtorg Trading Corporation here was postponed again today, until Sept. 19, by the United States Dis- trict Court in Brooklyn. The JDL members, six male youths and one young woman, have been freed on bail since their indictment last Aug.
The Committee for the Jewish “Seven,” composed of ten lay and rabbinical Jewish leaders, claims the support of Rep. James H. Scheuer (D. NY); Rabbi Moses Feinstein, president of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the US and Canada; Nash Kestenbaum, president of the National Council of Young Israel, and others. The Committee quotes Scheuer as calling the seven members “persons of high and altruistic idealism who are deeply and rightly concerned with the fate of their brethren in the Soviet Union, a fate I have witnessed first-hand.” Scheuer suggested that the seven may have been “singled out…because it was diplomatically or politically expedient to do so as a response to Russian expressions of ‘outrage’ over embarrassing incidents calling attention to the plight of Soviet Jewry.”
Rabbi Feinstein said the seven “deserve mercy and whatever help one can provide.” Kestenbaum wrote to President Nixon. Dr. Hillel Seidman, chairman of the Committee and of the Jewish Nazi Victims Organization of America, called for “an unbiased legal reexamination of the case before trial by the Justice Department, which we believe will result in its dismissal.”
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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.
