The wife of Rep. Alphonzo Bell (R. Calif.) will head a local women’s delegation to Washington April 17 to participate in the Women’s Interfaith Action for Freedom for Soviet Jews, according to the Southern California Council for Soviet Jews. Mrs. Bell, who is the actress Marian McCargo, said: “This is not primarily a Jewish issue. Oppression has no boundaries and no geography. We are dealing with human beings–three and a half million men, women and children who happen to be Jewish, and whose only crime is that they want to leave the country that no longer wants them.”
Mrs. Bell, who with her husband visited Russia earlier this year with a study mission of the House Education Subcommittee, said that while “I was, of course, aware of the Soviet Jewish problem before our trip,” she had thought that “much of what I heard had been somewhat exaggerated.” Her personal talks with Russian Jews “impressed and amazed” her, she continued, since they “were willing to meet with us and ask for our help while knowing that they could be arrested for just being seen with the Americans.”
The women’s delegations will seek meetings with “women in public life” in Washington, including Mrs. Richard M. Nixon and the wives of other Presidential candidates, the wife of Soviet Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin and officials of the Red Cross. They expect to be joined by Katya Palatnik, whose sister Raiza is a political prisoner in the USSR.
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