Former prisoner of conscience Boris Chernobilsky, who spent one year in a labor camp during a 13-year battle to leave the Soviet Union, has received permission to emigrate to Israel, according to the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.
Also receiving permission, according to the SSSJ reports, were his wife, Elena; son, Joseph, 3; and daughters, Evgenia, 14, and Anya, 17.
Anya is married, but there was no indication whether her husband or his family had requested or received permission to emigrate.
Soviet officials first denied Chernobilsky permission to emigrate in 1976. Unable to find work afterward in his field, radio engineering, Chernobilsky worked at a series of odd jobs.
Elena Chernobilsky taught Hebrew classes.
He was twice arrested for taking part in protest demonstrations, and in 1981 was sentenced to a one-year term in the Gulag for “resisting arrest.”
There was no indication when the family would be able to leave the Soviet Union.
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