The World - News from July 12, 1989

The World Jewish Congress, which opened its first office in a Communist country this week, could open one in the Soviet Union in the near future, the group’s president said. The new office, opened Monday in Budapest, Hungary, is designed to work with Hungary’s 80,000 Jews and with the small Jewish populations in other East European countries outside the Soviet Union. “My guess is that (we) will have an office in the Soviet Union within the next two years,” Edgar M. Bronfman, the group’s president, said. But he said Soviet Jews, estimated to number at least 1.8 million, would first have to become more organized.