Jewish activists in the Soviet Union have expressed disappointment in the results of President Nixon’s visit to Russia last month. Contrary to their “great expectation” that their situation would improve. “We see that after the visit our condition worsens,” they said in a new appeal addressed to President Nixon and other world leaders. The text of the appeal was telephoned from Moscow to the headquarters of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry here. It stated that people seeking to leave the USSR are being subjected to Army induction. “A week does not pass without arrests, intrusions by force or inductions against these people,” the appeal said.
The appeal was addressed to President Nixon and the US Congress; to the prime ministers and parliaments of Great Britain and France and to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. A separate plea on behalf of Gavriel Shapiro, a Jewish activist arrested June 12 after he was secretly wed to Judy Silver, a Cincinnati social worker, was addressed to United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim by Mark Nashpitz, a 29-year-old former dentist in Moscow.
The appeal to the heads of state and national legislative bodies demanding “human rights” for persons detained or inducted in the USSR was signed by Nashpitz and by Boris Einbender, Boris and Maria Orlov, Kaplan (first name not given), Valentine Prussakov “and others” according to the SSSJ. It referred to Shapiro’s arrest and to the arrests on June 5 of Boris Epist and on June 12 of Vladimir Prestin. “They will not go on trial but will be put in the Army,” the communication said. Nashpitz’s letter to Dr. Waldheim appealed to him “to use all your influence to prevent Gavriel’s (Shapiro) induction into the Soviet Army and to effect his release to Israel.”
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.
