Senator Kenneth B. Keating tonight called for a nation-wide petition, to be signed by millions of Americans of all faiths, to be presented to Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev as a protest and “remonstrance” against anti-Jewish persecutions by the Soviet Union. He made the proposal at a protest meeting sponsored by the newly formed American League for Russian Jews, declaring: “We must convey both to the Government of the Soviet Union and to the average Russian the growing concern in the free world over Stalinist tactics against the Jewish minority in the Soviet Union. “
In explaining the purposes and aims of the League, Morris Brafman, chairman of the new organization, said that it would seek to “aid the Jews in the Soviet Union to live as Jews, culturally and religiously, and to emigrate if they so desire.” He called upon the Soviet Government to allow the Jews “to live as a free people or let them leave the country. “
The new group called on President Johnson and the U. S. Government as well as the United Nations to intervene on behalf of human rights and human dignity of the Russian Jews, and to demand “that Soviet Russia accord its Jewish subjects the elementary rights of leaving the country where they are persecuted, permitting them to go to the land of their forefathers, the land of Israel, where they can live as Jews in freedom, dignity and security. “
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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.
