A crowd of 1,000 community leaders in “Babi Yar Square” heard Mayor Wes Uniman proclaim “Soviet Jewry Day” yesterday in Seattle in honor of the Soviet Jewry Freedom Bus’ first day of a two-month journey to 30 cities across the country. Tsipora Wolf and Ilia Wolk, the two young Soviet activists on the Bus, commented on behalf of their three American companions and themselves at the opening ceremonies that they were “deeply moved” by the city’s official commemoration of West Lake Mall as “Babi Yar Square” for the day.
Speaking at Temple DeHirsch before 200 selected Jewish high school activists. Miss Wolf, who left the Soviet Union for Israel only four months ago, told of her personal experiences with oppressive Soviet authority and of her close friends in USSR prisons because they “want to live as Jews and go to their homeland in Israel.” She want on to say “More and more of the young Jews ask to go to Israel every day, they are not afraid.” Addressing several thousand students on the University of Washington campus today. Wolk, also arrived in Israel from the Soviet Union this year, said “It is impossible to find a solution to the Jewish question in the USSR. Fifty-three years of Soviet power in Russia show us this. To be a Jew you have to go to Israel.”
The American Zionist Youth Foundation is sponsoring the Freedom Bus program in cooperation with the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry. A special exhibit of signs, posters and photographs displayed on a mobile platform attached to the Bus attracted hundreds of Seattle residents who filed through the Bus to read and select some of the material available for distribution.
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.
