Jewish Group Appeals to U.S. and U.N. to Intervene for Jews in Russia

The Farband-Labor Zionist Order today appealed to the White House, the United Nations and the United States Department of State to intervene with the Government of the Soviet Union, on behalf of full freedoms of religious and cultural life for the Jews there. The appeals were lodged following a special all-day conference conducted here yesterday by the Farband, which adopted strong resolutions urging those governments to protect the rights of their respective Jewish populations.

The conference marked also a memorial to the martyrs of the Stalinist purge of Jewish intellectuals and other Soviet Jewish leaders who were executed in the USSR in 1952. Principal speakers included Louis Segal, general secretary of the Farband, who is also a member of the executive of the Jewish Agency; Shraggai Netzer, of Israel, a leader of the dominant Mapai party there; and the American Yiddish poets, Jacob Glatstein and Joseph Rubinstein. Samuel Bonchek, chairman of the Farband’s New York City committee, presided.

Regarding the situation of the 3,000,000 Jews in the Soviet Union, the resolution pointed out that the present Khrushchev regime “has not found it possible or necessary even now to rehabilitate the memories of those Jews who were murdered 10 years ago, or even to condemn those executions.” The resolution demanded that the USSR give the Jews in the Soviet Union the opportunities to emigrate in accordance with principles of human rights.

Another part of the resolution expressed the Farband’s deep concern for the situation of the Jewish populations in Argentina and Uruguay, which have recently been beset by open anti-Semitic manifestations. The resolution noted that, in all three countries, human rights as defined by the United Nations are being violated, and called upon the governments of these countries to take energetic measures against anti-Jewish elements. The conference also launched plans for the celebration of the organization’s 50th anniversary. The plans call for a national jubilee convention to be held in New York in December 1963.