Witnesses Say Soviet Jews in Camps for Demanding Exodus
PARIS (JTA)—Three witnesses prison in January 1969 for slan-
from the Soviet Union told an in- dering the Soviet Union after he
ternational gathering here that a unsuccessfully applied for an exit
number of Russian Jews have al- permit.
ready been sent to concentration
Meanwhile, the Communist
camps or sentenced to prison
Party newspaper Pravda has
terms for demanding their right
published a letter signed by 70
to emigrate and especially for
"veteran bolsbeviks of Jewish
making public appeals in that re- nationality" denouncing alleged
spect.
atrocities committed by Israel
The witnesses testified in closed
"as a result of the Zionist-Fas-
cist policy of the bourgeois gov-
session at the European Jewish
Conference on Soviet Jewry which
ernment of Meir, Dayan, Ehan
and Sharer."
opened here attended by more
The English text of the letter
than 300 delegates from 17 coun-
tries. Their identities were not dis- and the names of all the signator-
closed in order to potect the fami- ies along with the year of their
lies they left behind in Moscow admission to the Communist Party
was circulated here in Review of
and Leningrad.
The witnesses, two men and a the Soviet Press, a news digest
woman, were described as past published by the Soviet Mission to
members of the Komsomol, the the United Nations.
The letter was apparently
Soviet Communist Party youth or-
ganization. They described in de- prompted by Egyptian claims that
tail the cases of several Russian Israeli bombers blasted a primary
Jews who went to jail and whose school in the Nile delta April 8,
families were subjected to severe killing 30 children. But the greater
harassment because they had ap- portion of its text- was devoted to
plied for exit permits to go to Is- extolling Soviet treatment of its
Jewish citizens and recalling the
rael.
After the testimony , was heard, role played by Russian Jewish
workers in the Bolshevik revolu-
the conference adopted a reso-
tion and in the war against Hitler.
lution urging the Soviet govern-
Asserting that the Soviet Union
ment to grant Jews "their con-
stitutional rights" and the right has granted all nationalities, in-
"to emigrate to Israel for those cluding the Jews, the fullest rights
who wish to." It expressed soli-
darity "with those Jews who 3 Teens Arrested in Link
face their situation with courage
With Synagogue Burglary
and dignity," expressed "grave
NEW YORK (JTA) — Three
concern" over the "continued
deterioration" of the Jewish po- teen-agers were arrested in con-
nection with a recent burglary at
sition in the USSR and recom-
Ahavoth Torah Synagogue in the
mended that a world conference
be called "at the earliest pos- West Bronx. The police said they
sible date to deal with this bad sold the synagogue's large
candelabrum, which has been re-
burning issue."
covered, for $4 and had also taken
According to the witnesses a
bottles
of wine and other items.
large part of Soviet Jewry wants
Rabbi David Toiv recalled that
to emigrate to Israel, and thou-
five Torahs had been destroyed in
sands have already filed applica-
an arson attack on the synagogue
tions to leave. Many of these have
several weeks ago. The teen-agers
been deprived of work and other
have not been linked by •police to
elemental rights after Soviet the arson attack.
authorities turned down their emi-
He told the JTA that the Ortho-
gration applications, the witnesses
dox temple, at which some 50
said. They described as a danger- mainly elderly worshipers attend
ous new trend the arrest of Jews
services, had taken to reschedu-
who have applied for exit permits, ling night time activities to the
especially those who sent appeals
daytime in the wake of these in-
abroad.
cidents and similar ones at syna-
Cited as an example of such in- gogues throughout the city.
stances was the case of Mrs. Lilia
He noted that Mayor John V.
Abramova Ontman, of Cheinovsky, Lindsay was serving as honorary
who was arrested in December chairman of a campaign to restore
and sentenced to 21/2 years in damaged or stolen religious pro-
prison by a state court last Jan. perty and that the police depart-
8 for "slandering the Soviet Un- ment had initiated a "worship pa-
ion and insulting the authorities." trol."
Mrs. Ontman had requested per-
mission to emigrate in order to re- POSTHUMOUS AWARD
unite with her elderly father in
The first Distinguished Service
Israel. She had also submitted Award of the American Federation
several unsuccessful applications of Information Processing Societies
on behalf of her husband, her (AFIPS) will be presented post-
adopted child and her younger sis- humously to Dr. Walter Hoffman,
ter. When the authorities rejected May 6, during the banquet of the
them, she declared that she no Spring Joint Computer Conference
longer considered herself a Soviet here. The award will be presented
citizen and refused her identity "in recognition of his selfless con-
tributions to the federation and
card.
At her trial, she told the court the computer profession."
that she based her request on the
Soviet Constitution and on the Uni-
versal Declaration of Human
Rights, of which the USSR is a
signatory. After sentencing, her
sister was expelled from school
and her adopted child was forcibly
placed in. an institution, the con-
ference was told.
Also related was the case of
Boris Koehubievsky, a Jewish engi-
neer sentenced to three years in
and opportunities, the letter con-
tinued, "To the Israeli Zionist we
say: stop your filthy solicitation.
You won't find a single traitor
among the Jewish working people
of the Soviet Union." The dates
next to the names of each of the
signers indicated that about half
of them were admitted to the
"Communist Party" between 1903
and 1914.
The letter added: "We have not
forgotten the fight of our party
against the Zionists, Bundists and
other Jewish nationalists . . . we
cannot without the greatest of
anger and indignation" hear about
"the destruction of Arab cities and
other inhabited points, and the
massacre of women, children and
aged people."
Theodore C. Sorensen, New
York Democratic State Commit-
tee nominee for the U.S. Sen-
ate, told a Moscow audience
Monday that the Soviet govern-
ment should permit emigration
to Israel, help seek a Middle
East peace, grant Increased
freedom of speech and agree to
halt the arms race.
He was reported to have inter-
preted the response to his remarks
on the "Jewish question" as nega-
tive. Sorensen, invited by the In-
stitute of the U.S.A. before his
nomination, commented smilingly
that he might be criticized for
campaigning in Moscow instead of
in New York.
Sorensen, lawyer and former
presidential aide, also met with
Chief Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin of
the Moscow Central Synagogue,
whom he gave a Bible from a New
York rabbi, and with Foreign
Trade Minister Nikolai S. Pato-
lichev.
Refused permission to have
American reporters cover his re-
marks at the institute. He tape-
recorded the proceedings and
made the recording available to
newsmen in his room in Moscow's
Budapest Hotel.
On the matter of emigration,
Sorensen, who is Jewish, declared
in his speech that "The Soviet Un-
ion should not keep its adherents
of the Jewish faith who have been
invited to settle in the state of Is-
rael."
Contending that he was not out
to "embarrass the Soviet govern-
ment," he advised it and "any
government faced with this prob-
lem" that "however contrary such
a desire to emigrate may be to
your wishes, your customs, the de-
sires of a majority of your popu-
lation or even your laws, let them
go."
Leonid Brezhnev, general sec-
retary of the Soviet Communist
Party, claimed Monday that peace
could have been restored in the
Middle East if it were not for Is-
rael's "expansionist plans." He
chided the United States and
"other patrons of Israel" for the
low state of their prestige in the
Arab world compared to "the
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54—Friday, April 17, 1970
Sutton Place, luxury apartment-townhouse community at Nine
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173 units now leasing. Directly opposite Plum Hollow Country Club
and adjacent to a tree-laced ravine, the winding entrance leads
through greenways to the two-bedroom, two - bath apartments and
two- and three-bedroom townhouses with a variety of architectural
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Club, featuring a Spanish-motif two-story clubhouse with an Olympic-
size pool and multilevel patio-terrace. An upper-level beamed ball
feature such activities as bridge lesons, canasta and social events,
such as the recent St. Patrick's Day-Purim party.
Arab people's friendship with the
Soviet Union." He promised that
the Socialist countries would give
the Arab peoples all the necessary
assistance "to frustrate the plans
of the aggressors in the Middle
East."
Brezhnev spoke at a meeting in
Kharkov in connection with the
presentation of the Order of Len-
in to the Kharkov Region.
"international inquiry"
An
under United Nations auspices
to investigate "Soviet action
against its Jewish population"
was urged at a House subcom-
mittee hearing here on the
plight of Soviet Jewry.
The proposal was made by Stan-
ley Lowell, vice president of the
American Jewish Congress and
vice chairman of the Amercan
Jewish Conference on Soviet Jew-
ry. Lowell also outlined a program
of action on Russian Jews that he
said could be undertaken by the
U.S. Congress and the State De-
partment.
He was one of five experts who
testified at the hearing conducted
by Rep. Leonard Farbstein, a
New York Democrat, chairman of
the subcommittee on Europe of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The hearing was held at the U.S.
Customs Court House.
Lowell called on both houses of
Congress, by joint resolution, to
"demand that the U.S. State De-
partment and Charles Yost, U.S.
ambassador to the UN, call for an
international inquiry into Soviet
action against its Jewish popula-
tion" and that the State Depart-
ment "make direct inquiry of the
Soviet Union's foreign ministry
with respect to the status of Jews
in the USSR."
Lowell also proposed that "world
opinion be marshalled to demand
that the USSR permit those of its
Jewish citizens who wish to leave
to emigrate freely to Israel and
other lands that are willing to re-
ceive them."
Jerry Goodman, director of
European affairs of the American
Jewish Committee, said the Krem-
lin's anti-Israel campaign has be-
come "incerasingly shrill" in the
past three months and has "sur-
passed in hysteria" Russia's cam-
paign against Red China, Czecho-
slovakian liberals and Marshal
Tito of Yugoslavia. He said Mos-
cow's policy was designed to "ap-
pease" its Arab allies.
Seventeen college students
from Philadelphia chained them-
selves to the fence in front of
the Soviet Embassy April 9 to
protest the Soviet refusal to al-
low Jewish families to emigrate
to Israel. The students — most
of them from the University of
Pennsylvania—were all members
of the Pennsylvania Committee
for Human Rights Now. The
university Is in the middle of
Soviet Jewry Week.
Police arrested the demonstra-
tors, after cutting their handcuffs,
and took them to the police sta-
tion. The group sang "Let my peo-
ple go" all during the proceedings
Franz Schoenberner,
Anti-Nazi Editor, 77
NEW YORK—Franz Schoenber-
ner, last pre-Nazi editor of Simpli-
cissimus, the German satirical
magazine, died last Saturday at
age 77.
Mr. Schoenberner, the son of a
Berlin pastor, fled Munich in
March 1933 and made his way into
Switzerland.
Under his editorship for 31/2
years, Simplicissumus fiad been
strongly anti-Nazi. In the first of
three autobiographical works,
"Confessions of European Intellec-
tual," Mr. Schoenberner described
his life up to the time of his flight.
He emigrated to the United States
from France in 1941.
In one 1930 issue of Simplis-
simus, Mr. Schoenberner ran a
cartoon showing two German
policemen lifting the top of Hit-
ler's head and examining the
void inside. the caption read:
"Isn't that strange that you can
make such a lot of trouble with
so little stuff?"
In the United States, he contin-
ued his fight against Hitler, work-
ing for the Office of War Informa-
tion, joining a refugee committee
and writing for American maga-
zines.
A paralytic since 1951, Mr.
Schoenberner was confilkd to a
wheelchair after an assault by a
TEL AVIV—The wife of a rabbi neighbor whom he had asked to
tried to phone her mother in Lon- turn down a radio.
don Monday and got Cairo instead.
This was the conversation reported Leonard Wolford Fox,
by Radio Israel:
"Hello, Cairo, how are you over Ex-Detroiter of DC
Attorney Leonard Wolford Fox,
there?"
"We're waiting for more of your a former Detroiter who was with
bombing," the Egyptian operator the U.S. Government Post Office's
contract negotiation department in
replied.
Washington D.C., for the past five
`You know, you don't have to be years, died April 9 at age 58.
bombed."
A native Detroiter, Mr. Fox was
"Tell that to Moshe Dayan," said a graduate of the University of
the Egyptian.
Michigan's ,law school. His wife,
"Perhaps you better tell that to the former Mildred Vass, also was
Nasser," the Israeli woman coun- from an old Detroit family.
tered.
Mr. Fox, former owner of Peter's
London then came on the line. Sportswear on Griswold Ave. down-
Normally there are no communica- town, leaves, in addition to his wife,
tions between Israel and the Arab a son, Rabbi Michael of Jerusalem;
world, and there was no explana- two daughters, Mrs. Michael (Su-
tion for the unusual wrong num- sanne) Glaser of Cleveland and
Laura; a brother, Arnold; and two
ber.
sisters, Mrs. Rosalind Sherman
and Harriet, all of Detroit; and
three grandchildren. Interment
Washington.
I Say, Cairo,
Are You There?
g3rzat g3rst4
• • •
,O ctivities
LOUIS MARSHALL CHAPTER
at a recent dinner, installed the
following officers: Mrs. William
Olson, president; Mrs. Stanley
Litinsky and Mrs. Jack Koffman,
vice presidents; Mesdames Manuel
Dorfman, Sam Leaderman, Ed-
ward Parish, Isadore Sklar, Isadore
Goldfarb and Charles Niskar,
secretaries; Mrs William Plotkin,
junior past president; Mrs. Harry
Buchalter, treasurer; and Mes-
dames Sam Gotlieb, Harry Clive,
Albert Halprin, Benson Litwak,
Louis Dorf, Bertha Brotman, Sam
Freedman and Albert Schwartz,
board members.
Samuel Landau, 86
Samuel Landau, former owner of
Penn Furniture Co., 13330 Michi-
gan, Dearborn, died last Saturday
at age 86.
Mr. Landau, 25342 W. Mont-
marte, Oak Park, was a native of
Austria and a Detroit resident for
70 years. He retired in 1960. Mr.
Landau was a member of Cong.
Bnai Moshe and Knights of Phy-
thias Lodge 55 and a trustee of
Pisgah Lodge, Bnai Brith.
Mr. Landau leaves his wife,
Millie; two sons, Sol and Alfred; a
daughter, Mrs. Irving (Jean)
Rosen; three sisters and seven
grand-children.