1000 Minsk Jews Commemorate Holocaust

More than 1000 Jews gathered last Friday at the memorial monument to the 5000 Jews who were murdered in the Minsk ghetto, Mrs. Genya Intrator, national vice-chairman of the Canadian Committee for Soviet Jewry, said today.

Mrs. Intrator spoke by telephone yesterday to Col. Lev Ovsishcher of Minsk, who along with another Red Army hero, Col, Yefim Davidovich, laid wreath on the monument, Ovsishcher said that when Davidovich began speaking Soviet authorities tried to stop him but allowed him to continue when the crowd began shouting “let him speak.”

Davidovich, who has been waiting three years for an exit visa to Israel, spoke mainly about the Jewish heroes and martyrs during World War II and the suffering of the Jewish people under Hitler’s tyranny, (According to Jewish sources in the Soviet Union, some of his references were seen by the audience to apply to present practices in the Soviet Union against Jews.)

Two memorials are held each year at the monument, one by Soviet authorities and the other by local Jews. This year the government ceremony was held at 11 a.m. and the Jewish memorial at noon, In London, it was reported that two Moscow Jews, Ilya Rubin and one surnamed Blinker, filmed the event but they were stopped by the KGB at the Minsk railway station and only allowed to leave after their film was confiscated.

Mrs. Intrator said that Ovsishcher said that it is getting more difficult to apply for an exit visa in Minsk. Invitations to come to Israel from relatives there are not received and obtaining the required character references takes a couple of months of delays and runaround.