A resolution proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives would mark the 40th anniversary of the free Soviet Jewry movement.
U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on Oct. 18 proposed the resolution, which has 14 co-sponsors. The measure provides details of many historical events in the three-decades-long struggle to free millions of Jews suffering from religious persecution in the Soviet Union.
The resolution also recognizes the 20th anniversary of the Freedom Sunday Rally for Soviet Jews in Washington, D.C., which it says “embodies the American principle of citizen activism for the greater good.”
“Congress was and remains the backbone of support in the U.S. government,” Mark Levin, executive director of NCSJ: Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia, told JTA in an interview Friday in Moscow.
NCSJ, which had been known as the National Council for Soviet Jewry, was instrumental in the struggle to free Soviet Jews and lobbied heavily for the resolution.
