Jewish students picketing




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Background: More than one thousand Jewish students representing 13 colleges and universities in the New York metropolitan area demonstrated outside the Soviet mission to the United Nations on Friday (1 May) protesting what they called anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.

The students, members of a group called Students Struggle for Soviet Jewry, carried signs on an orderly picket line. The signs urged an end to discrimination against Jews inside Russia.

A spokesman said the protest was in answer to a reported increase in anti-semitism in Russia. One example cited by a picket captain was a publication, "Judaism with Embellishment" which, the student said, was an anti-Semitic tract recently published in the Ukraine. He said there had been executions of Jews, closings of synagogues, and restrictions on Jewish religious and cultural activities in Russia.

As the students marched, they chanted a Hebrew hymn. There were about thirty New York policemen on duty during the demonstration. The picketing was entirely peaceful.