To be Jewish in the Soviet Union is to be hated. ridiculed. tortured. Jews who practice their religion or teach Hebrew and other Jewish studies are either imprisoned or internally exiled. Refuseniks. those Jews who apply for visas to the West. lose employment and are constantly harassed by KGB agents. Few are ever allowed to leave the Soviet Union. These major human rights violations against Soviet Jewry are a crime against humanity. They violate many of the accords that the Soviet Union has signed. including the Helsinki accords and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The Soviets have recently increased the attack on the Jewish community by forming the infamous AntiZionist Council and by slowing Jewish emigration to a trickle. Recently. I received a letter from a constituent concerned over the Korean airliner murder and over the treatment of Soviet Jewry. He suggested that as partial restitution to mankind for the KAL murders that the Soviet Union pay the West with increased emigration of Soviet Jewry. This idea may strike some as bizarre. Indeed. it is absurd that we should feel compelled to beg them to grant their own people basic human rights. but it is precisely such a brutal system with which we must contend.
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emigration visas