A hearing on the “denial of human rights to Jews in the Soviet Union” was held by the subcommittee on Europe of the House Foreign Affairs Committee today. The subcom- mittee chairman, Rep. Benjamin C. Rosenthal, a New York Democrat, said the failure of Soviet authorities to admit international legal observers to the current trial of nine Jews in Leningrad “only increases world suspicion of the validity of the charges and the fairness of the court proceedings.” Reps. James Fulton of Pennsylvania and John Buchanan, of Alabama, both Republicans, expressed interest and concern over the kind of pressure the Soviet regime would respond to. They suggested that violence would not move the Kremlin to permit greater freedom to Russian Jews, Two New York rabbis who testified at the hearing agreed. Rabbi Gilbert Klapperman, of Congregation Beth Sholom in Lawrence, N.Y. said the Soviets responded to pressure but that demonstrations must be conducted with dignity and without violence. Rabbi Arthur Schneier, of Park East Synagogues in New York City, said he didn’t want a confrontation with the Soviet Union but to peacefully obtain cultural and religious rights for Jews in the USSR. He observed that the last rabbinical seminary in the Soviet Union closed down in 1962.
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