The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry’s chapter at Columbia University managed to reach ailing Jewish activist Vitaly Rubin in a Moscow hospital after a night of persistent telephone calls to the USSR, the SSSJ reported. Rubin, 52, an expert on China who was fired from his professorship after applying for an exit visa to go to Israel, suffered a heart attack recently. But he was dragged from his bed by Soviet police at dawn last week and taken in for interrogation. Afterwards, he was taken to Hospital 63 in Moscow, the SSSJ said. His whereabouts had been unknown.
They said that when Prof, Rubin was finally reached by phone he thanked the students for the effort Columbia University has made in officially “adopting” him. He said he expected to be released from the hospital Friday, the SSSJ reported. Columbia, which had invited Prof. Rubin to be a guest lecturer were he able to leave Russia, was the scene of two demonstrations on his behalf this week by SSSJ members and student sympathizers from Columbia, Barnard College and Stern College for Women.
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.
