A petition addressed to Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, requesting him to correct the abuses under which Russian Jewry suffers religious and cultural discriminations, was signed here by 600 persons within a few days after organized Jewish youth in this community started circulating the petition on Purim, last Sunday.
The petition, spelling out the various anti-Jewish discriminations against Russian Jewry in the religious and cultural fields, calls on Premier Kosygin also “to provide a climate whereby anti-Semitism will be ended and discrimination and propaganda against the Jews be stopped.” The petition is only one of four points in a broad program mapped on the Russian Jewish issue by the youth here under the auspices of the Savannah Jewish Council and the local Jewish Educational Alliance. The other points are:
1) Erection of an Eternal Light in front of the JEA premises, to call attention to the plight of the USSR’s 3,000,000 Jews.
2) Request all Jewish organizations and heads of families here to include in this Passover’s seder services special prayers on behalf of Russian Jewry.
3) Conduct a campaign among all non-Jewish as well as Jewish organizations and leaders here, including churches, synagogues, civil rights leaders and public officials, toward participation in the drive for adding more signatures to the petition to be sent to Premier Kosygin. That campaign is to be culminated with paid advertisements in the local press by May 1.
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.
