Israeli Students Plan Plea for Russian Jews Signed by ‘heroes of Soviet Union’

Israeli students are preparing a petition on behalf of Russian Jewry to be signed by “Heroes of the Soviet Union” here and abroad, it was disclosed at a student rally here yesterday. “Hero of the Soviet Union” is one of the highest accolades bestowed by the Soviet Govern- ment for valor in combat. Many Jews who earned it during World War II presently live in Israel and in Western countries. The student organizers said that Soviet authorities could not disregard a petition coming from heroes in the battle against the Germans after it was made public to the rest of the world. The petition will urge the restoration of cultural and religious rights to Soviet Jews including the right to emigrate to Israel. The student rally was addressed by Tina Brodetzkaya, a Jewish school teacher from Riga who recently emigrated to Israel. Miss Brodetzkaya was one of the first Russian Jews to address an open letter to Premier Aleksei Kosygin demanding her right to emigrate. Soviet authorities permitted her to leave this year. She told the students that Western Jewry, especially the youth, must continue to agitate publicly for the rights of Soviet Jews. If they kept silent, she said, it would only increase the troubles of Jews in Russia.

Special prayer services for Soviet Jewry were held at the Walling Wall as part of a world-wide day of protest on behalf of Jews in the Soviet Union. The services were led by Chief Rabbi Isser Untermann, the Ashkenazic chief rabbi, and Chief Rabbi Elyahu Pardess, of Jerusalem. The services were marked by the sounding of the shofar and a prayer composed for the occasion by Rabbi Unterman for “Our brethren growing up without knowledge of God, in an atmosphere of hate and fear…many of them languishing in prison because they requested permission to migrate to the Holy Land.” The reported recent wave of arrests of Jews in Russia was denounced in a letter prepared yesterday by the editors council of student newspapers in Israel for transmission to Soviet authorities through the Finnish Embassy. The letter assailed the arrests of Jews for expressing a desire to emigrate to Israel and charged that anti-Semitism was being practiced openly in the USSR. (A plane carrying a streamer with the words “Let Soviet Jews Go” flew over Amsterdam today as Jewish students picketed the Soviet trade mission on behalf of Soviet Jewry. The demonstration was part of a world-wide protest against the repression of Jews in the USSR. The students distributed copies of letters that two Leningrad Jews sent to the Soviet Presidium recently protesting the arrests of fellow Jews.)