THE JEWISH NEWS

THIS ISSUE 60';

SERVING DETROIT'S JEWISH COMMUNITY

DECEMBER 18, 1987 / 27 KISLEV 5748

Lack Of Action Disappoints Wiesel

Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel has some suggestions
for Reagan, Gorbachev, and the Jewish community
in the area of human rights for Soviet Jewry

ALAN HITSKY

Associate Editor

Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel
believes the Ronald Reagan-Mikhail
Gorbachev summit meeting last week
was a positive step. He sees the Dec.
6 Washington mobilization for Soviet
Jewry on the eve of the summit as
"the only way we can show our
solidarity." And he thanks Gorbachev
for improving conditions inside the
Soviet Union.
"But these are gestures," says
Wiesel, speaking in Detroit last week
for the opening of the local Allied
Jewish Campaign. He suggests that
President Reagan should sponsor an
international summit meeting on
human rights to seriously address
human rights questions throughout
the world because, obviously, the
Reagan-Gorbachev summit "did not
produce the results we wanted on
human rights!'

"The appropriate gesture," says
Wiesel, would be a human rights
summit at Auschwitz. That would be
a meeting "with some imagination,
some poetry." And as long as Wiesel
is changing summit sites, he proposes
having the next nuclear arms reduc-
tion talks at Hiroshima. "It would
certainly point to the failure of
humankind to prevent" the nuclear
tragedy of Hiroshima.
When questioned at a news con-
ference about the effect of the summit
on Ethiopian Jewry, on Afghanistan
and other issues, Wiesel admits that
some progress was made, "but I am
most disappointed about human
rights. Everyone recognizes the
absence of human rights in the Soviet
Union!'
President Reagan, Wiesel says,
should have responded to Gorbachev's
statement that he is not on trial here
on human rights by saying, 'You are
not on trial. But we must discuss to-

Elie Wiesel: Jewish linkage.

day's problems, not just tomorrow's
problems: Perhaps Mr. Reagan did
say this;' Wiesel believes.
If not concrete results in the area
of human rights, Wiesel was hoping
that the Washington summit would
have produced a statement "to give
people hope. Why shouldn't they have
come out with a few words?" he asks.

In advance of the Dec. 6 rally in
Washington, Wiesel was approached
"on the highest levels" to withdraw
his name and not participate. The
Soviet representatives tried to assure
him that they were working hard on
human rights issues, "but naturally
I was not convinced!'

Continued on Page 16

Women in business
are finding
greater acceptance
than in the past

