At Forced Labor Camps Glezer, Berman Each Get Three-year Prison Terms

Two more Soviet Jewish activists have received stiff prison terms, it was reported today by Soviet Jewish sources. Illa Glezer, 41-year-old biologist specializing in brain research, was sentenced in Moscow to three years in a strict-regime forced-labor camp for “anti-Soviet and Zionist propaganda.” His trial, which ended last night, was held behind closed doors. Grigory Berman, 26-year-old philologist, received the identical term in Odessa on conviction for draft evasion. His trial, also secret, was held Aug. 10.

Glezer, who was born in Kharkov, was arrested Feb. 7 after a six-hour search of his Moscow home turned up material deemed “anti-Soviet” by the authorities. Yesterday’s issue of Pravda, the Soviet Communist Party newspaper, contained a long article, keyed to the trial, that described Glezer as a “rabid Zionist” who “slandered” the USSR in letters abroad and by feeding false information to “his friends in Israel.” Regarding Glezer’s private life, the article said that he had been divorced twice and indulged in unnatural practices. Jewish circles likened the article to the work of Julius Streicher, editor of the Naziera journal Der Stuermer, and to the press attacks on individual Jews during the Stalin era. But the circles said that this type of journalism had been dormant since the end of the Stalin era.

Glezer graduated from Moscow University, receiving a higher degree in 1960 for a thesis on schizophrenia. For four years thereafter he researched the brain and lectured in biology. In 1964, he accused two professors of anti-Semitism and left the university, but in 1966 he was a Soviet representative to an international biological congress in Bratislava. He published several books in West Germany, Britain and the United States, and some of them have become standard works. His latest book, published in the US, was “The Brain in Figures and Tables.”

Glezer became interested in Israel in 1963. He learned to speak Hebrew from beginners’ lessons over Kol Israel, and in Jan. of this year applied for exit visas for himself and his aged mother. He was immediately dismissed from his post at a government research institute, and subsequently arrested. The draft-evasion charges against Berman were “trumped up,” according to Jewish sources, who claim that he is not subject to military service at this time. Besides, they added, Berman voluntarily sought to register for the military, but was rejected because he had applied for emigration. Then, the sources said, the KGB (security police) threatened him with trial if he did not serve.