U.S Jewish Groups Complain to U.N. on Treatment of Jews in Russia

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights today made public the text of a memorandum submitted jointly by 17 national Jewish organizations in the United States asking the UN to act on the discriminations against Jews in the Soviet Union. The memorandum will be considered by the UN Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities which opened its two-week session here yesterday.

The memorandum lists numerous facts indicating that Jews in the Soviet Union suffer disabilities both as an ethnic-cultural and religious group and as individuals, it emphasizes that these disabilities do not apply to other groups or individuals in the Soviet Union.

"Reports whose veracity can no longer be in a doubt clearly indicate that a special policy is being applied against Soviet Jews both as individuals and as an ethnic, religious and cultural group," the memorandum states. "This policy stands in sharp contrast even to those institutional facilities which have been permitted to other ethnic and religious groups in the Soviet Union; moreover, it contradicts the very principles of equality which the Soviet authorities have repeatedly professed in international forums.

"Major facets of this tragic and deteriorating position have consistently been brought to public attention. They include a persistent refusal to restore their cultural institutions to Soviet Jews (after years of forcible deprivations) and a campaign of incitement in Russia and in the Ukraine against Judaism, Among those who have verified these reports are many outstanding personalities, including outspoken friends of the Soviet Union.

"We American Jewish organizations find it difficult to believe that Soviet authorities can refuse to take note of the collective concern of mankind. It would in no way be inconsistent with the Soviet system to carry out a major change in policy towards Soviet Jewry. Such a change would require:

"1. The granting of full cultural and religious group rights and institutions in Yiddish and Hebrew to Soviet Jews, including the right to establish a federation of Jewish communities inside the Soviet Union.

"2. Permission to Soviet Jews to emigrate, in accordance with the principles of the Human Rights Declaration, for purposes such as the reunion of dispersed families.

"3. Resumption of organizational contact between Soviet Jews and Jewish groups elsewhere."

The organizations which signed the memorandum are; American-Israel Public Affairs Committee; American Jewish Congress; American Trade Union Council for Labor Israel; American Zionist Council; B’nai B’rith; Hadassah; Jewish Agency for Israel; Jewish Labor Committee; Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.; Labor Zionist Movement; Mizrachi-Hapoel Hamizrachi; National Community Relations Advisory Council; National Council of Young Israel; Union of American Hebrew Congregations; Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America; United Synagogue of America; and Zionist Organization of America.