Soviet Jews were promised today that Americans will not forget them as long as their efforts to emigrate remain unrealized. This was the pledge of the estimated 200,000 Jews and non-Jews who marched down Broadway from City Hall to Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan in what Robert Abrams, chairman of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, called the largest turnout for Solidarity Sunday for Soviet Jewry in its six-year history.
It was also the pledge made by speakers at the demonstration, including Midge Constanza, President Carter’s Assistant for Public Liaison, and Sen. Howard Baker (R. Tenn.), the Senate Minority leader.
Ms. Constanza, the first representative from the White House to speak at a Solidarity Sunday demonstration here, did not mention Carter by name. But she said the American government will “seek every productive way to promote human rights here and abroad.” She said while the U.S. wants detente, human rights “will assume a position of importance” in all dealings with foreign countries. She said peace must be combined with justice.
Ms. Constanza, the former vice-mayor of Rochester, N.Y., spoke from a platform from which the Statue of Liberty could be seen not too far off in New York harbor. She noted that the United States was a nation of immigrants and Americans were united in the belief that people should be allowed to leave their country and return to it whenever they wanted to. In her only direct reference to Soviet Jews, she declared “I want to say to Soviet Jews we have not forgotten them.”
Baker said that as the Senate Minority Leader he pledges that the Republicans in the Senate will work for the freedom of Soviet Jewry and others who seek freedom in the USSR. He said today was not important because of the number of demonstrators or the speakers “but because of the courage of those in the Soviet Union–whose determination is far more eloquent than our mere words.”
PART OF MONTH-LONG ACTIONS
The demonstration at Battery Park was one of many held throughout the United States and is part of a month-long series of activities which culminate in National Solidarity Day in Washington on June 12. The event today was also the first time that the Conference held its demonstration in lower Manhattan rather than along Fifth Avenue and eastward to the United Nations.
Margy-Ruth Davis, Conference executive director, said earlier that the change was due to the fact that “people no longer see the United Nations as the seat of the world’s conscience” and because of the symbolism of Battery Park with the Statue of liberty and the recently dedicated Jerusalem Garden.
But the spirit of the marchers was the same as they sang Hebrew songs and chanted slogans. The march began with youngsters dressed in Soviet prison costumes surrounded by banners saying “Their Fight is Our Fight”; “Free losif Begun,” and “Free Anatoly Sharansky.”
Abrams, who declared on the platform that “We pledge to Soviet Jews we shall never forget you; we are one people,” pointed out that today’s demonstration was particularly dedicated to Sharansky and Begun, two Moscow Jewish activists who have been arrested and are threatened with trials on trumped-up charges.
One of the most colorful contingents in the march was a large group from the Oceanfront Council for Soviet Jews in Brooklyn which carried blue flags with white stars of David–the banner of Soviet Jews. There were also banners urging freedom for Syrian Jews.
Among the marchers were Burton and Anne Greenblatt of Teaneck, N.J., who were with a contingent from the Teaneck Jewish Center. They said they visited the Soviet Union in 1972 and after seeing “how our brethren suffered” pledged to take a more active role. This, they said, was one way of doing it. They said that Soviet Jews told them the Soviet government knows about demonstrations in behalf of Jews the day it happens and Soviet Jews know it the next day. The marchers also included groups from the National Council of Churches and labor organizations.
MAKE HELSINKI ACCORD WORK
Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (D. NY), in his speech, praised Carter for his declarations on behalf of human rights and urged him to turn his principles into a program. He said this should start in Belgrade in June when the signers of the Helsinki accord discuss it for the first time since it was issued in 1975. He said it is up to the American representatives and the Europeans as well to tell the Soviet Union to “let their people go freely” and to continue this demand until persons who wish to emigrate can do so.
Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R.NY) said the “Helsinki agreement “internationalized’ beyond question the issue of denial of human rights and freedom of emigration in the Soviet Union. No longer can the Soviet government maintain that its policies of repression and denial of the right to emigrate are ‘purely internal affairs’ beyond the reach of international attention.”
Gov. Hugh Carey, who had issued a proclamation naming May I Solidarity Sunday in New York State, declared that “as free men and women, it is our duty and obligation to assist those Soviet Jews in their fight for freedom.” He also said that “today we renew our pledge that the freedom of Israel shall never be endangered.”
Dr. German Shapiro, a Moscow physician who emigrated to Israel with his wife four months ago after a four-year struggle, said he believed American Jews helped him and will continue to help Soviet Jews because “in surviving over the centuries, the feeling of Jewish solidarity, the feeling of common fate, and realizing that we are one family and one people, played the most important role.”
Messages of thanks were received from Soviet Jews with appeals to continue demanding that the Soviet government meet its commitment to human rights. The messages were released here by the New York Conference and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. The latter organization is the sponsor of the nationwide Solidarity Month.
Before the start of today’s demonstration, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada said it could not participate nor condone the actions of Soviet Jewry groups. “Regardless of how well their intentions of actions and words might be, we cannot agree to all their methods and speeches, which can, God forbid, cause fatal consequences,” the Union said in a statement by its president, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein.
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.
