Sylva Zalmanson Kuznetsov, the 27-year-old Soviet Jewish engineer who was sentenced last Dec. 15 to 10 years in prison for complicity in an alleged skyjacking plot, is seriously ill in Potma prison in central Mordovia, Jewish sources in Riga reported last night by telephone. The sources said that unless Mrs. Kuznetsov is released and given appropriate medical treatment, she may be in danger of losing her life. Jews of Riga and other Soviet cities, it was said, are trying to persuade the authorities to free her. On Aug. 6, Moses I. Feuerstein, former president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, reported in Boston that the prisoner had become “almost totally deaf” in one ear, was “deteriorating physically and mentally” and expected to survive under her current conditions “only a few years at the most.” Her sentence ends June 15, 1980.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
