William Korey, 87; fought for Jews on immigration, rights
NEW YORK - William Korey, who as a lobbyist on international issues for B’nai B’rith fought for the interests of Jews in the Soviet Union and helped win a long battle to persuade the United States to ratify the international genocide convention, died Aug. 26 in Cambridge, Mass. He was 87.
The cause was complications of cardiac arrhythmia, his daughter Eileen Korey said.
Dr. Korey left academia to become director of the Anti-Defamation League, a division of B’nai B’rith that fights for the civil rights of Jews and others, in Illinois and Missouri, and then in Washington.
In 1960, he became the first director of B’nai B’rith International’s United Nations Office. He later directed B’nai B’rith’s international council and its international policy research department.
At the United Nations, Dr. Korey countered countries that opposed Israel and that denounced Zionism as racism. He formed alliances with other American organizations accredited to the United Nations and, in 1966, was elected chairman of a group of 86 labor, civic, and religious groups that worked to promote interest in the United Nations’ activities.
As a lobbyist, he successfully helped push the Jackson-Vanik amendment to the 1974 Trade Act, which penalized the Soviet Union for restricting Jewish immigration to Israel. In articles and speeches, he defended the 1975 Helsinki Accords between the communist bloc and the West as providing a framework through which Moscow could be influenced.
For decades, he fought for the United States to ratify the convention against genocide, which the UN General Assembly had passed unanimously in 1948. Opponents included lawyers concerned about technical details and racist senators who worried that the pact could be used to help blacks. Dr. Korey argued forcefully that the United States had embarrassed itself internationally by failing to ratify the convention.
Senate ratification came in 1986. Two years later, both houses of Congress passed a bill to make genocide a crime under US law, and President Reagan signed it into law.
A Chicago native, William Korey graduated from the University of Chicago in 1946. He earned a master’s degree and a doctorate from what is now the Harriman Institute of Columbia University. He then taught at the City College of New York and Columbia and lived in Queens.
He wrote prolifically in both the scholarly and the popular press. His books included two examinations of anti-Semitism in Russia. A study he did in 1970 with Ina Schlesinger, a specialist on Russian history, found Soviet textbooks rife with anti-Semitism. An example was the failure to list Israel among the new nations that came into being after World War II.
Dr. Korey’s wife of 54 years, the former Esther Student, died in 2002. In addition to his daughter Eileen, Dr. Korey leaves another daughter, Alix, and two grandchildren.