A concerted KGB campaign to muzzle the voice of Soviet Jews is increasing in momentum. Over the past couple of weeks, dozens of telephone lines, belonging to Jewish activists, have been disconnected. Last Friday, Moscow journalist, Yevgeny Baras, was warned by the KGB that if his telephone was used for international calls, measures would be … Read more
At the beginning of April, Yuri and Anna Berkovsky were arrested in the Siberian town of Novosibirsk. Since then no word has been heard from them. A few hours after their arrest, the police handed their five year old daughter to her grandmother. the charge against the Berkovskys appears to be one of speculation. they … Read more
A hunger strike of prisoners has been in progress for three weeks in the Soviet strict-regime camp complex in the Perm region. In all, eleven Jewish prisoners are taking part in this protest for better conditions. In camp 35, Hillel Butman, Leib Khnokh, Lev Yagman, Anatoly Altman and Iosef Mishener are on hunger strike. In … Read more
Yevgeny Barazh is a Jewish journalist living in Moscow. nearly a year ago he applied for an exit permit for himself, his mother, his wife and five year old son, Leonid. On December 10, ironically International Human Rights Day, he received a refusal from the emigration authorities, ostensibly on the grounds that he had been … Read more
The drop of nearly 40% in the number of Soviet Jews being permitted to emigrate to Israel has brought to the forefront of the struggle many prominent intellectuals and professionals. In Kishinev, Professor Israel Gohkberg, an internationally known mathematician, has just been refused an exit visa on the grounds that he would take with him … Read more
A number of young Jewish activists have been threatened with conscription into the Red Army, according to reports reaching here from the USSR. The most prominent of those faced with two years in the Soviet armed forces is a twenty-six year old mathematician, Yuli Vexler. he has been asked to report to his district military … Read more
The festival of Purim was celebrated by many Soviet Jews last week. For them the figure of Haman had a more modern connotation. As Ovsei Gelman from Tbilisi, Georgia, put it in a message to a friend in London: On the eve of Purim, which symbolises the vain efforts of all enemies of the Jewish … Read more
LAST week saw two very similar human rights protests in the USSR, but with completely opposite aims. Well-known dissidents such as Andrei Sakharov and Vladimir Maximov stated that Solzhenitsyn should not have been expelled from the Soviet Union and insisted on his right to remain. Simultaneously. Jewish members of the Moscow intelligentsia began an indefinite … Read more
Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you — you not even suspect that the day already dawned outside. It is longer that stifled, that sombre, Irrevocable time when you expelled Akhmatova in the same servile manner It Is not … Read more
Among the many tragic stories of Soviet Jewish prisoners, the case of Yankel Leibovich Khansis is one of the saddest. he was first sentenced in August 1970 to two and a half years imprisonment on a hooliganism charge. in March 1972 he was arrested again and at the trial held some nine months later, was … Read more