Jews to pressure for migration

Press, 11 September 1986, Page 8

Jews to pressure for migration

NZPA-Reuter Paris World Jewish leaders, including a freed Soviet dissident Anatoly Shcharansky, are opening a conference today to discuss what they say is the plight of the soviet Union's Jewish community. The three-day conference, organised by the World Jewish Congress, is expected to focus on ways

of pressuring Moscow to allow more Jews to emigrate to Israel. Jewish bodies say some 40,000 of the Soviet Union’s more than two million Jews want to leave but emigration has slowed to a trickle in recent years. The conference will also discuss anti-semitic violence and is expected to call for increased security measures for

Jewish synagogues and other institutions because of an attack on an Istanbul synagogue. Twentyone worshippers were killed in the attack by Arab gunmen on Saturday.

Some 3000 people marched through the streets of Paris yesterday to protest against the Instanbul deaths and a bomb attack on Monday at the Paris City Hall post

office, where one woman was killed and 19 people were wounded.

Israel Singer, the W.J.C.’s secretary-general, said the organisation was launching a new campaign, printing documents in several languages, to publicise its allegations that the Austrian President, Dr Kurt Waldheim, was hiding a Nazi past.

He said documents that proved the former United

Nations chief had been engaged in Nazi war crimes would be translated into French, Hebrew, German, Spanish, and Italian. Dr Waldheim has rejected the allegations.

Mr Singer said he hoped the new multilingual campaign would put pressure on European and other Governments to ban Dr Waldheim from visiting their countries.