The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry reported today that Soviet Jewish activist Vladimir Slepak was arrested in his Moscow apartment today after he and his wife hung a sign from their balcony demanding the right to emigrate to Israel to join their son. The sign drew a hostile crowd which cheered when Slepak was dragged from the building by plainclothes police and thrown into a police lorry. His wife was not seen.
Slepak’s arrest was confirmed by the National Conference on Soviet Jewry here. The 50-year-old electrical engineer first applied for an exit visa eight years ago and has since been in the vanguard of Soviet dissidents seeking human rights and the right to emigrate. Until his arrest today, Slepak was the last member of the unofficial Helsinki Final Act monitoring committee still at large.
Meanwhile, the 25 Jewish women placed under house arrest for protesting the denial of exit visas, demonstrated from the windows of their Moscow apartments today, joined by their 17 children, according to reports from the NCSJ and the SSSJ. The women had planned to use the occasion of National Children’s Day to demonstrate at the Lenin Library near the Kremlin.
WOMEN SHOUT FROM WINDOWS
The Soviet authorities refused permission and the women shouted from their windows that they wanted to emigrate to Israel. Foreign correspondents who gathered near the apartment complex were surrounded by KGB agents who beat on the windows of their cars shouting “Go away, you are not wanted here.”
Earlier, the women issued a statement declaring “We will protest against the illegal detention of our families in the USSR and the impossibility of educating our children in Jewish traditions and culture,” the SSSJ reported.
Actions in support of the Moscow women were staged today in London, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Cincinnati and other Western cities. In New York, members of the SSSJ demonstrated outside the midtown Manhattan offices of Aeroflot, the Soviet airline. They displayed blow-up photos of Russian Jewish children with the caption: “Russia: Let Jews Go.”
In another demonstration of support, Mrs. Helen Jackson and Mrs. Harrison Williams, co-chairpersons of the NCSJ Congressional Wives Committee for Soviet Jewry, sent a telegram to Irene Gildengom-Lainer, one of the Moscow women. It said: “We support the efforts of you and your friends to reunite with your families in Israel. Your actions are courageous and we will continue our efforts on your behalf.” The signers of the telegram are the wives of Sens. Henry M. Jackson (D.Wash.) and Harrison Williams (D.NJ).
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.
