Major American Jewish organizations, including secular and religious groups, labor, fraternal and civic, voiced “apprehension” and “chagrin” this weekend over the arrest and imprisonment of Russian Jews in Leningrad and Moscow on what were seen as “patently trumped-up” charges of “espionage.”
Label A. Katz, national president of B’nai B’rith, called the conviction of Gedalia R. Pechersky, a leader among Leningrad Jews, “incomprehensible.” Mr. Pechersky has been sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment.
Mr. Pechersky according to Mr. Katz, was known to and revered by religious Jews in the Soviet Union because of his piety and strong faith and courage.” The 60-year-old Leningrad leader, said the B’nai B’rith president, “met with foreign visitors openly and had no hesitancy about discussing the affairs of the Leningrad Jewish community. This can hardly be defined as a treasonable act.”
“The ironic fact is,” continued Mr. Katz, “that the Soviets used Leningrad as a show-place of religious freedom of Jews. In tourist guides included it in their points of interest to foreign visitors.”
The sentences meted out to the Russian Jews were protested today in a statement issued by the Jewish Labor Committee, representing 500,000 Jewish workers organized in trade unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The JLC expressed its “bitterness” and protested “vigorously against the trial and sentencing of Gedalia Pechersky and others.” They were sentenced, said the statement, “for no other crime, punished severely, because they are Jews.”
Adolph Held, national chairman of the Jewish Labor Committee, sent a telegram today to Adlai E. Stevenson, chairman of the United States delegation to the United Nations, urging “the need for UN intervention into the whole range of the discriminatory policies against Jews within the Soviet Union.” In his telegram, Mr. Held stated:
“The confirmed arrest, secret trial and conviction of three Jewish religious leaders, and the additional arrests known in similar cases, warrant a UN human rights investigation. Policies of suppression, recrimination and discrimination in many facets of Soviet life still plague the Soviet Jews. Only the UN spotlight at this moment can save those already imprisoned and those slated for a similar fate on trumped-up specious and false charges.”
On behalf of the American Jewish Congress, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, president of the Congress, issued a statement declaring the latest arrests and imprisonment were “fresh evidence of the continued tragic plight” of the Jews in the USSR. He voiced the AJC’s “deep regret and increasing apprehension” over the outbreak of “treason” trials against Jews in the Soviet Union.
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