Thatcher Pledges ‘absolute Support’ to Ease the Plight of Soviet Jewry

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pledged her “absolute support” and that of her government to ease the plight of Soviet Jewry to members of the Presidium of the World Conference on Soviet Jewry at the end of a two-day meeting yesterday to discuss the Kremlin’s clamp down on emigration and anti-Semitic policies.

Leon Dulzin, Presidium chairman, who is also chairman of the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization Executives, said Mrs. Thatcher had spontaneously stated that she and her government would “do absolutely everything in support of our just cause.” The meeting took place at the Premier’s residence in Downing Street. The delegation brought to her attention several individual cases of hardship, including that of losif Begun, recently sentenced to 12 years imprisonment and internal exile for the “crime” of teaching the Hebrew language.

In reply, she vowed her continued determination to do all she could to induce the Soviet authorities to reopen the gates of their country, and fulfill their other commitments under the Helsinki agreements.

Later, Dulzin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the doors of the Soviet Union were now closed to Jewish emigration. “We do not know why, just as we do not know why they were suddenly opened 12 years ago,” he said.

Julius Berman, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told the JTA the U.S. Administration had told American Jewry that because of the depth of the freeze in U.S.-Soviet relations, Washington currently had little leverage in Moscow over Soviet Jewry and that world Jewry at this time should enlist the support of Western Europe and the Third World. Of Mrs. Thatcher, Berman said: “We were all so impressed by what she said and the way she said it.”

THE PRESIDIUM COMMUNIQUE

Earlier, at the end of its proceedings, the Presidium issued a communique assuring Soviet Jewry that they were not alone in their struggle and that the Jewish people throughout the world stood “united behind them, supported by governments, parliaments and significant political, religious, academic and trade union groups.”

To the government of the Soviet Union it declared: “Reopen the gates for those Jews wishing to join their brethren; release from prison all those Jews whose sole crime is a desire to go to their homeland and enable them to maintain their cultural and religious identity; put an end to the oppressive policies against the Jews and cease the dissemination of all forms of anti-Semitic propaganda.”