A total of 2,725 Jews left the Soviet Union in January, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry reported Wednesday.
This is 25 percent less than December’s total of 3,652. However, if the January rate is maintained or increased for the rest of the year, more than 32,000 Jews will leave the Soviet Union in 1989. Nearly 19,000 emigrated last year.
Meanwhile, the board of governors of the National Conference, meeting here Wednesday, approved the appointment of Martin Wenick as the organization’s new executive director.
Wenick, 50, is currently deputy assistant secretary of state for coordination in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. A career foreign service officer, he is scheduled to take up his new position in March.
Wenick served in Moscow, Rome, Prague and Kabul, before becoming director of the State Department’s Office of Northern Europe and later director of the Office of Eastern European and Yugoslav Affairs.
A native of Caldwell, N.J., he graduated from Brown University and did graduate work in Soviet and East European affairs before joining the foreign service.
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.
