Paulina Epelman and her nine-year-old daughter are destitute in Leningrad, unable to obtain exit visas to Israel. Mrs. Epelman wants to join her husband, a lecturer at the University of Beersheba, Jewish sources in the Soviet Union reported today.
They said she was dismissed from her job as chief pharmacist at a Leningrad hospital after applying for a visa. Mrs. Epelman was told that she was fired because of her behavior–trying to leave the Soviet Union to join a “traitor” in Israel. She and her child are without means of support. Mrs. Epelman has appealed to United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim to intervene in her case which is a matter of basic human rights, the sources said.
Jewish sources reported that 22-year-old Yuri Pokh of Odessa has been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment at a labor camp for alleged “evasion of military duty.” Pokh was never called up until he applied for a visa to go to Israel, the sources said. When he received his draft call he offered to withdraw his visa application and serve his time in the Soviet Army. But the court branded him a deserter and passed sentence, the sources reported.
Sofia Vassileivna Kalestratova, a Russian woman lawyer who will defend activist Gavriel Shapiro on draft evasion charges next week, has been appointed by the Union of Moscow Lawyers to defend Shapiro’s friend, Mark Nashpitz. Nashpitz has been charged with the same offense but unlike Shapiro he is being held in jail without bail. No trial date has been set.
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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.
