Jewish Groups Plan ‘open Letter’ in N.Y. Times on Soviet Jews

A number of Jewish organizations are sponsoring an “open letter” to Soviet President Podgorny, in the form of an advertisement in the New York Times Sunday, which will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the slaughter of 24 Jewish intellectuals during the Stalin era, Emanuel Muravchik, executive director of the Jewish Labor Committee, said today.

He said the open letter will have signatures of more than 100 intellectuals, appealing for the rights of Soviet Jews and will also condemn the recent huge increases in exit fees for Jewish academicians seeking to emigrate from Russia. Other groups sponsoring the advertisement, he said, are the Workmen’s Circle, the Labor Zionist Alliance and the Greater New York Committee on Soviet Jewry.

(More than 150 survivors of the Nazi Holocaust and their children in Minneapolis signed appeals for Soviet Jewry to Soviet officials in a ceremony commemorating the 20th anniversary of Stalin’s slaughter of the 24 Jewish intellectuals, the Minnesota Action Committee for Soviet Jewry reported.

(Under memorial candelabra holding six blue and white candles in memory of the six million murdered European Jews, the signers met at the Jewish Community Center for endorsement of petitions to President Nixon, United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim and Soviet Premier Kosygin. The survivors wrote their names, addresses and the name of the concentration camps where they were held or their places of hiding.

(The petitions urged the Soviet government to recognize the territorial and historical right of the Jewish people “to be repatriated to their homeland, Israel,” and to “cease harassment, arrest, imprisonment and commitment to mental institutions of Jews who seek the right of emigration to Israel.”)