Eight long-term refuseniks in Leningrad, tired of waiting for their exit visas to emigrate to Israel, sent a telegram to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Monday. They wrote:
“We, a group of Leningrad Jews, have a problem for many years for the right to leave for Israel, for the right to be reunited with our relatives and with our friends, our people. However the Soviet officials again and again say no to our legal appeal, violating the international deals of the Civil Rights and Helsinki Agreements, both of them signed by the Soviet Union.
“They keep telling us that the interests of such a great superpower as the USSR will suffer if we find at last our families, our homes, and possibility to plan our future by ourselves, and bringing up our children as we prefer. We are living examples of the divergence between the proclaimed course of democratization and reality in the case of emigration policy.
“Years in refusal don’t pass without damage to us. Our chances to begin a new, successful life are decreasing. Our health is getting worse. We have little hope to solve our problems.
“On the 23rd of March we shall go on demonstration, with the demand to give us exit visas. We can’t and don’t want to wait any more. If not now, then when?”
The eight who signed the telegram are: Leah Shapiro, Michael Baizer — just fired from his job, and this week in Moscow demonstrating for refuseniks — Elena Keiss-Kuna, Abba and Ida Taratuta, Boris Lokshin, Nelly Shpeizman — whose husband, Yuri, suffers from cancer — and Inna Rozanskaya (signed a “Wife of Boris Lobonikov”).
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.
