Seven women and seven children, aged seven months to four years, were hustled into a police wagan and taken to Manhattan’s 23rd Precinct for booking on disorderly conduct charges today after they attempted to block the gates of the Soviet Mission to the United Nations.
The women were demonstrating against the current wave of arrests and trials of unauthorized Jewish educators in the Soviet Union, in the third phase of what the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ), organizer of the demonstration, terms “Operation Redemption,” according to Glenn Richter, national coordinator of the SSSJ.
He said the women, four of whom were accompanied by their young children, attempted to reach the gates of the Mission in midtown Manhattan. They were blocked by a phalanx of police and were arrested when they sat down in the middle of the street. They are scheduled to appear in court March 12.
The women were Barbara Eisenman of Manhattan; Linda Fisch of Jersey City, N.J., mother of three daughters aged 1-4; Barbara Gerwirtz of Manhattan, mother of two sons aged seven months and four years; Sharon Katz of Manhattan; Chaya King of Queens; Dena Levinson of Manhattan, mother of a two-year-old daughter; and Lenore Richter of Manhattan, mother of a one year-old daughter. The women unfurled an Israeli flag as they sat in the street.
“Operation Redemption” began on January 7 when six rabbis were arrested for staging a sit-in at the office of Tass, the Soviet news agency. On January 25, four other rabbis and two journalism students were arrested for trying to block the gates to the Soviet UN Mission.
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.
