| AJC Visits Estonia, Signs Association Agreement with Jewish Community
April 6, 2008 – Tallinn, Estonia – An American Jewish Committee leadership delegation concluded a visit to Estonia. During the visit, AJC signed an association agreement with the Estonian Jewish community, as it celebrated the 20th anniversary of its reemergence after five decades of communist oppression preceded by the Nazi occupation and Final Solution.
"The signing of this agreement is very important for us,” said Alla Jakobson, president of the Estonian Jewish community. “We will draw great strength from our partnership with such an important Jewish organization. I recall my visit to AJC’s Annual Meeting in Washington two years ago, where I was so impressed with the reach and access of AJC. Now, I am very proud that AJC has come to Tallinn.”
The association agreement, AJC’s twenty-fifth such partnership with a Jewish community around the globe, was signed at a conference commemorating the milestone anniversary of the Estonian Jewish community’s rebirth.
AJC Executive Director David Harris was the keynote speaker before an audience of more than 250 Speaker of the Parliament Ene Ergme and several other Estonian lawmakers, the Israeli and Czech ambassadors and other diplomats, major Estonian print and broadcast media, and representatives of the Finnish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian Jewish communities, joined in marking the auspicious occasion.
“AJC is proud of its longstanding friendship with Estonia, whose successful effort to reestablish sovereignty and thrive in a difficult neighborhood has special resonance for Jews,” said Harris. "We are equally proud to partner with Estonia's strong and dynamic Jewish community, which has made such remarkable progress in just two decades and serves as an inspiration for the strength of the human spirit.”
The AJC delegation met privately for one hour with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves at the presidential palace. The discussion focused on Estonia's regional relations and its valued contributions to the transatlantic community, as well as the situation in the Middle East. AJC also met with Speaker Ergme, Tallinn Mayor Edgar Savisaar, Israeli Ambassador Avi Granot, and U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission Karen Decker.
The delegation visited the Holocaust memorial in Klooga, outside Tallinn. The group offered a memorial prayer on the site where the Nazis murdered 2,000 Jewish inmates at a slave labor camp just days before it was to be liberated in September 1944 by the Soviet army.
AJC was a very early and persistent voice in calling on the U.S. government to recognize Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian independence in 1991, and later to support the Baltic states’ accession to NATO in 2002. In addition to those two successes, AJC has actively supported Estonia’s entry into the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, which is making progress toward completion. | 
