Three Soviet Jews were arrested and sentenced to 15 days imprisonment after staging a hunger strike at the Tass office In Kishinev to protest the denial of an exit visa to one of them, Jewish sources in the Soviet Union reported today. The three were identified as Victor Magder, Lev Belitzstein and Abraham Katler.
They went to the office of Tass, the Soviet news agency, because Magder’s father, a Tass employee, refused to sign a document consenting to hit son’s emigration to Israel. Soviet regulations require parental consent even though, as in Magder’s case, the applicant is an adult and head of his own family.
A reported raid by Soviet militiamen on the homes of “unemployed Jewish scientists in Moscow was seen here today as giving He to rumors that Soviet authorities were softening their attitude toward educated Jews seeking to emigrate. According to Jewish sources in the Soviet Union, 12 flats were raided. (Reports received yesterday by the JTA from other sources gave the names of only nine scientists visited by the militiamen.) All of them were dismissed from their Jobs after applying for emigration visas. They were reportedly warned that they will be arrested soon on charges of “parasitism.”
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.
