Sir Barnett Janner, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, today appealed to the authorities of the Soviet Union to permit Russian Jews this year to have matzoth baked in government bakeries for Passover, or to allow the import of matzoth from abroad. He made the statement on behalf of the Board after the regular monthly meeting of the body here today.
“Last year, shortly before Passover, ” he said, “the news was spread abroad that matzoth bakeries, especially in the Moscow district, would not be able to bake matzoth and that many Jews who wished to have at least that symbol of the festival were denied it. I know I have the support of every member of the Board and the community in appealing to the Soviet authorities to make it possible to allow the full use of the state bakeries in the Soviet Union, and by import from abroad, for every Jew who wishes to celebrate Passover and maintain at least one of the links which binds Jew to Jew everywhere.”
In general, Sir Barnett said, criticism regarding the situation of the Jewish population in the USSR centers mainly on the “virtual impracticability of Jews leading a communal, religious and cultural life. ” “It is not, ” he stated, “that the law forbids such a life, but that facilities formerly given for the development of Judaism as a religious and cultural entity are no longer afforded and that obstacles–some of them of a civil nature–are placed in the way of such development, so that the distinction of Jewish nationality, marked on Jewish identity papers, can only advance the statistician and may be and often is used to the individual Jew’s disadvantage.
“We have from time to time had to protest, and must do so again, against the assiduous and tendentious publicity given in the Soviet press to Jewish names in lists of offenders charged with so-called economic offenses, and to the disproportionately large number of Jewish names set out among those given death sentences or long-term imprisonment. There is nothing in this which accords with the high claims that the Soviet authorities do not discriminate on grounds of race, religion and nationality.”
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