Resolutions urging the world to intervene with the Soviet Union on behalf of ending Soviet anti-Semitism, calling upon the USSR authorities to safeguard the cultural rights of Soviet Jews, and to permit Jews to leave the Soviet Union for purposes of family reunification, were adopted here yesterday at the conclusion of a two-day Scandinavian Conference on Soviet Jewry. Leading scientists and writers from Sweden, Denmark and Norway attended the conference, under the chairmanship of Prof. Torgny Segerstedt, rector of Uppsala University.
A message was received from Lord Russell, the British philosopher, who called for the re-establishment of Jewish cultural rights in the USSR, abolition of religious discriminations practiced against Soviet Jews, family reunification privileges, and “an effective struggle against anti-Semitism.”
One of the principal speakers at the conference, Prof. Herbert Tingsten, former editor of the influential Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, told the session: “Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union is carried out under the guise of anti-Zionism, on the theory that Zionists are guilty of dual loyalty. But dual loyalty should be possible in countries where Jews are tolerated. The great American patriot, “Thomas Jefferson, had said that everyone believing in progress has two fatherlands, his own and France. Swedish Communists claim they can be loyal to the Soviet Union and to Sweden. I can feel solidarity with the Soviet Jews and with Sweden. Although I am not a Jew, I have a second fatherland–Israel–because Israel has promoted world progress.”
Another of the speakers was Joseph Bergher-Barzilai, a former Palestinian Communist who had spent 25 years in the USSR, holding a high post in the Comintern for three years. Later, he served 22 years in a Siberian prison camp. He told the conference that the author of the infamous, anti-Semitic work, “Judaism Without Embellishment,” which was officially rejected by the Communist Party of the USSR, had never been punished because ranking members of the Soviet presidium had supported his anti-Semitic theses.
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.
