Rabbi Meir Kahane, who has been agitating for the right of Jews to get out of Soviet Russia, is now trying to get himself and seven other Jewish Defense League leaders into that country. So far he has been denied an entry visa. Rabbi Kahane, head of the JDL rang the doorbell at the Soviet Embassy here today but was denied admittance. He claimed that an appointment had been made for him two days ago with Vladislav V. Shimanovsky, a political attache at the Embassy.
Rabbi Kahane’s lawyer, Rafael Perl, told newsmen that the JDL leader and the Russian official had chatted at the latter’s home for a half hour last summer following a JDL demonstration outside. Rabbi Kahane was arrested last June 25 while holding a news conference outside the Soviet Embassy.
The JDL leader told the newsmen that the JDLers want to visit the Soviet Union from April 14-May 7 to conduct a “fact-finding mission” so as to be able to inform President Nixon “exactly what is happening to Jews in the Soviet Union” before the President departs for his May 22 summit meeting in Moscow. Rabbi Kahane said he planned to visit Jewish communities in Kiev, Odessa, Moscow, Leningrad and Riga as well as the Potma labor camps where Jews are imprisoned and the Cheryaskhous special psychiatric hospital.
According to Rabbi Kahane, he hoped by his visit to prevent “a potential blood bath by Jewish militants who have threatened” that Soviet diplomats would die if Jewish prisoners perished in Soviet camps. “We don’t want to see this happen,” Rabbi Kahane stated. He compared his proposed trip to the Soviet Union to President Nixon’s recent visit to China. He said he wanted to show the Soviets “the way to peace is through talks.”
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.
