concerted drive to mobilize academic support of efforts to ease the plight of Soviet Jewry was launched here today by the newly formed Academic Committee on Soviet Jewry. A 17-point action program which will seek to bring the weight of America’s academic community to bear on the Soviet regime to reverse its “Irrational and cruel” policy toward the Jews, was adopted at a two-day conference attended by more than 200 delegates representing 86 college campuses. The program was submitted by Prof. Herbert H. Paper, of the University of Michigan. He reported that some 1,175 faculty members at 153 American college campuses had so far pledged their support to the committee’s efforts. Prof. David W. Weiss, former professor of bacteriology at the University of California, was conference chairman.
The conference was addressed by a specialist on Soviet affairs, Prof. Leonard Schapiro of the London School of Economics. The conference also heard Dr. Binyamin Eliav, of Jerusalem, Israel’s leading authority on Soviet affairs. The conference adopted the text of a “national academic appeal,” introduced by Prof. Irene Eber, of Whittier College, which called on the Soviet Government to end its “systematic anti-Jewish propaganda assault,” restore the cultural and educational facilities and secure for the Jewish religious community “the same kinds of institutions and prerogatives accorded all other religions” and to “open the door to emigration for those Jews who wish to be re-united with their families abroad as well as for those Soviet Jews who wish to live in Israel.”
The action program adopted by the conference includes sponsorship of research projects and similar studies, distribution of new published materials and a “systematic attempt to develop and introduce appropriate scholarly articles and studies into the relevant professional journals that will reach libraries, scholars and students in the U.S.S.R.”
Prof. Schapiro said that Soviet authorities had imposed “a blanket of silence” on the fact that the Jewish population loss during World War II was proportionately four times as severs as that of the Soviet population as a whole. He conceded that interest in religion had declined among Soviet Jews as a result of intermarriage, assimilation and other factors. “But the drastic nature of the restrictions against Jewish religious life, as compared with other denominations, makes it certain beyond doubt that the decline has been artificially forced by Soviet authorities,” he said.
Dr. Eliav said that the Soviet regime was not insensitive to international opinion. “Soviet leaders are aware that any anti-Semitic excesses in the U.S.S.R.–such as are now taking place in Poland–would greatly damage the prospects of a future Soviet rapprochement with the West. What happens to the Jews of the U.S.S.R., therefore is of international importance–not only to Jews abroad seeking to amerliorate the plight of their fellow-Jews in the Soviet Union but also to Communist supporters in the West who are embarrassed by any anti-Semitism in the Soviet bloc,” Dr. Eliav said.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
