A total of 1,493 Jews were allowed to leave the Soviet Union in June, but only 150 of them, or 10 percent, went to Israel, according to figures released Tuesday by the Soviet Jewry Research Bureau of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.
The June total represents an increase of 434 over the number of Jews allowed to leave the month before. It is 697 Jews more than the number allowed to leave during the same month last year.
The emigration tally for the first six months of 1988 stands at 6,078, compared to 3,104 Jews allowed to leave during the first half of 1987.
The National Conference figures for June contrast slightly with those released over the weekend by the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration in Geneva. It reported that 1,470 Jews left the Soviet Union, of whom 127 went to Israel.
According to a spokesperson for the National Conference, the Geneva figures do not include the 23 Jews who traveled to Israel via Bucharest, Romania.
The Geneva figures also included a half-year emigration total of 6,930, considerably higher than the National Conference figures.
(JTA Geneva correspondent Tamar Levy contributed to this report.)
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.
