The U.S. Joint Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which received testimony today on the treatment of Jews in the USSR was informed by Eugene Gold, chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, that “at the present time” 180,000 invitations sent to Soviet Jews to find their homes in Israel have not been acted upon.
Gold also told the Commission that “no one can say” why Jewish emigration has fallen in the last two years “except that the Soviet Union totally controls the rate of emigration.” He said that “Before we can consider change” in the Soviet trade relationship.” it is “necessary” to have “some affirmative acts in respect to Soviet Jews as a precondition for a dif- fering attitude by either Congress or the American people.”
Gold, who is District Attorney of Brooklyn, made the statement when he was asked whether the Jackson/Vanik Amendment or the Stevenson Amendment in present laws related to American government trade benefits to the Soviet Union are the cause for the emigration drop.
He pointed out that last year 55,000 affidavits were sent to the Soviet Union at the request of Soviet Jews and of these 26,000 were a renewal of affidavits that had become outdated because the recipients apparently were not permitted to leave. Gold said that the number of “hard core” refusniks is about 900 families totaling approximately 2000 persons. He said the refusniks have been denied visas over the past two or three years and some more than seven years.
Gold and other witnesses testified to the harassment and other practices in the Soviet Union used against Jews who sought visas to emigrate to Israel. The rate of affidavits at present is estimated at 5000 each month. Since 1970, about 133,000 Jews have emigrated from the Soviet Union. About 14,000 left last year, NCSJ sources said.
TRIBUNAL TOLD OF SOVIET VIOLATIONS
In a related development, human rights specialists and experts on religious communities in Eastern Europe, in a public tribunal yesterday in New York, testified that the Soviet Union knowingly and deliberately violated the Helsinki accord, which it signed in August, 1975, by denying basic human rights to both Christians and Jews.
The testimony included a wide variety of case histories of Soviet citizens who had lost their jobs, had been incarcerated in mental hospitals, had been refused opportunities for higher education, had been exiled to labor camps, and had suffered myriad other kinds of intimidation and discrimination because of their insistence on observing religious rituals or their expressed requests to emigrate. In each case, it was pointed out that such actions were contrary to the terms of the Helsinki agreement.
The public hearing was held at the Carnegie Center for International Peace under the auspices of the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry, which, at the request of the Helsinki commission of the Senate and the House, is organizing the testimony to be given before the commission in Washington on April 28. The joint congressional commission is preparing for U.S. participation in a meeting in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in June, at which the 35 nations that signed the Helsinki agreement will consider the possibility of establishing a permanent organization.
The evidence was presented to a panel of international jurists, religious leaders, academic authorities and human rights specialists that included Rita Hauser, attorney, and former U.S. Representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission; Bayard Rustin, executive director. A. Phillip Randolph Institute; Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, national director of interreligious affairs, American Jewish Committee; and Sister Ann Gillen, executive director, National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry.
Each of the witnesses made a point of indicating his own religious affiliation as evidence of the wide spread of concern among both Christians and Jews concerning the denial of human rights in the Soviet Union. Among the witnesses were a Roman Catholic. Ukrainian Orthodox, Baptist, Jew and Presbyterian.
TODAY, THE JEWS; TOMORROW, OTHERS
Dr. Thomas E. Bird, professor of Slavic languages, Queens College, City University of New York, describing the Soviet Jewish community as “equal to every other religious and national group in the USSR under the law, but grossly and clearly and documentedly unequal in the arbitrariness with which the law is applied,” urged his fellow Roman Catholics and fellow Christians to understand their own self-interest in supporting the cause of Soviet Jews. “This is not a ‘Jewish problem,’ ” he said. “The Soviets want the Jewish community to be isolated. If they are being persecuted and isolated today, we are surely going to be in a group that is persecuted and isolated tomorrow.”
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.
