Fourteen New York Congressmen have joined in a request to Secretary of State William P. Rogers to intervene on behalf of three Russian Jews scheduled to go on trial in the USSR during the next few weeks. The trial of one of them, Gavriel Shapiro, starts in Moscow July 26. The others facing trial are Vladimir Markman of Sverdlovsk and Iliya Glezer.
The Congressmens’ action was announced by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry whose chairman-elect, Stanley Lowell, reported that Soviet Jews fear the trials will be a repetition of the Leningrad “show trials” of 1971. Those trials resulted in harsh sentences for the defendants.
The Congressmen who have communicated with Rogers on the matter are: Joseph P. Addabbo; Herman Badillo; Frank J. Brasco; Emanuel Celler; Edward Koch; Bertram Podell; Peter W. Rodino; John J. Rooney; Lester Wolff; and Charles B. Rangel, Democrats; and Hamilton Fish Jr.; James R. Grover; and Norman Lent, Republicans.
SYNAGOGUE COUNCIL APPEALS TO NIXON
The Synagogue Council of America appealed to President Nixon last night to aid Gavriel Shapiro and his American wife. Rabbi Irving Lehrman, president of the Synagogue Council, which represents Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism in America, said in a telegram to Nixon.
“The Synagogue Council urges you to take every appropriate measure to secure clemency and permission to join his American wife in the USA on grounds of compassion for Gavriel Shapiro about to go on trial in Moscow. His crime is loyalty to his faith and a desire to live a Jewish life. We hope our government will protest the action against Shapiro as a violation of humanitarian and civil liberties principles.”
(In Boston today, 25 youths began a three-week hunger strike in symbolic protest on behalf of Soviet Jewry.)
(In London, Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew calendar month of Av on which observant Jews mourn the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, was designated a day of intercession for Gavriel Shapiro, a Jewish activist in Moscow who goes on trial for alleged draft evasion next week.)
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