Avital Shcharansky Back in Israel After Illness Ends Her U.S. Tour

Avital Shcharansky returned to Israel yesterday after cutting short her North American tour on behalf of her husband, Anatoly Shcharansky, who was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and 10 years at a labor camp by a Moscow court earlier this month for alleged treason and anti-Soviet agitation.

She became ill in Chicago several days earlier and was ordered home by her physician. He described her condition as “complete exhaustion” stemming from the physical and mental strain of her campaign to secure her husband’s release. Looking pale and thin, she arrived at Ben Gurion Airport and was taken to her home where she is confined to bed.

She told reporters that she would resume her struggle on behalf of her husband and all Soviet Jews who want to emigrate as soon as she regains her strength. She said it was urgent to get as many Jews as possible out of Russia because there are repots that the Soviet authorities will discontinue issuing exit visas as of January, 1979. She said she was unable to contact her relatives in Russia because their telephone lines were cut.

AROUSED PUBLIC OPINION IN THE U.S.

(Mrs. Shcharansky’s campaign in the U.S., which took her coast-to-coast, succeeded in arousing public opinion against the Soviet treatment of her husband and all dissidents and gained considerable support in Congressional and other official circles. Eight Senators have written on “open letter” to Shcharansky declaring that the use of their “open meeting” in Moscow three years ago as “evidence against you of criminal conduct is tragic and unjustified.”

(The charges against Shcharansky were based on his contacts with Western circles including American journalists alleged by the Soviets to be agents of the CIA. The Senators wrote, “We shall continue to urge Soviet authorities to reconsider their actions in your case and permit you to emigrate.”

(Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D. Conn.), one of the signatories, said on the Senate floor Thursday that “It is especially unfortunate that one part of the ‘evidence’ which the Soviet authorities presented at Shcharansky’s trial to support the charge of ‘anti-Soviet agitation’ was the fact that he met with a delegation of U.S. Senators visiting Moscow in 1975.”)

(In St. Louis, Mo., Attorney General John Ashcroft, speaking at a “Free Soviet Jewry” rally, announced he is sending Soviet leaders a three-by-four foot scroll with a message reading “I express my outrage at the inhumane, illegal treatment of Anatoly Shcharansky and other Soviet patriots. I urge you to conform with the Helsinki Agreement and end oppression now.” The rally last Thursday was sponsored by St. Louis Jewish organizations.)

(In Detroit, the Board of Commissioners of The Michigan Bar Association adopted a resolution condemning the Soviet Union for “the violations by the Soviet government of the legal rights recognized by treaties” in the Shcharansky case. It urged Soviet authorities “to take all steps necessary” to insure that Shcharansky and “all others similarly situated be treated in accordance with the obligations of international law assumed by the USSR.”)