Rabbi Abraham Gross, president of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, has advised the State Department that the Orthodox organization is “astoundedly shocked and incensed” at the Department’s announced opposition to Congressional bills urging 30,000 emergency visas for Soviet Jews. “Our memories are fresh of the Breckenridge Long era and catastrophic failure to rescue our brethren,” Rabbi Gross said in his telegram, referring to the Assistant Secretary of State who in the early 1940s opposed relaxation of immigration quotas to aid Jews escaping Nazi Germany. Referring to special State Department action to help Hungarian refugees in the late 1950s and Cuban refugees during the Castro era, Rabbi Gross asked the Department: “Shall it be Cubans, yes; Hungarians, yes, and Jews, no?” (The Department maintains that the Attorney General has the parole authority to aid Jews as he has aided Hungarians and Cubans, and that the emergency visas are unnecessary.) Rabbi Gross concluded: “We urge our democratic principles and humanitarian interests to be extended to our Jewish brethren in the Soviet Union, greeting them freedom to emigrate and a haven from oppression in permitting them immediate entry to our shores.”
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.
