French Intellectuals to Confer on Plight of Jews in the Soviet Union

A number of France’s outstanding intellectuals, writers and artists, including some identified with the extreme left-wing, will attend a conference opening May 1 on the plight of Jews in Soviet Russia. The conference will be held under the auspices of a group of French writers and philosophers who organized nine years ago to keep tabs on the situation of Russian Jewry. Among those who will attend are Nobel Laureate Prof. Rene Cassin; Mayor Gaston Deferre of Marseilles, a former Presidential candidate; former Premier Pierre Mendes-France; the novelist Francois Mauriac; the artist, Pablo Picasso, and the French Protestant leader. Pastor Westphal. The conference’s standing committee said in a public declaration that despite slight improvements, Soviet Jews still suffered from serious social and cultural discrimination and lacked all normal educational and cultural facilities granted to ethnic minorities by the Soviet constitution.

(In Buenos Aires, following a three-day seminar on the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union, Jewish students established a University Committee for the Defense of Soviet Jews. They said the committee would seek to inform Argentine public opinion on the cultural and religious repression of Jews in the Soviet Union and to press for permission for Jews desiring to do so, to leave Russia.)