Abraham Mendelevich of Riga, the elderly father of Yosif Mendelevich, one of the defendants in the first Leningrad trial, is seriously ill in a Riga hospital as a result of the recent attack on him. Jewish sources here reported today.
There have been differing reports on the site and details of the assault on the elderly Jew. The report today gave this version: Mendelevich was walking with his wife when he was attacked by a neighbor, a Latvian named Palschevsky, who struck the elderly Jew repeatedly with an iron bar, while screaming “I’ll teach you where your fatherland is but you will die here.” Earlier reports stated Mendelevich was attacked in his apartment. The assailant was arrested but immediately released. Only after repeated protests to police was the assailant rearrested and is now in custody.
Jewish sources also reported that a hearing by the Supreme Court of the Russian Soviet Republic on an appeal by Valeriy Kukui, a 33-year-old Sverdlovsk engineer, sentenced to a three-year prison term for alleged slander against the Soviet Union, has been postponed again apparently indefinitely. The hearing opened Tuesday but was postponed until today because the chief prosecutor was ill. Kukui, who had publicly proclaimed Israel as his fatherland and demanded permission to emigrate, was arrested last March and tried and sentenced last June 15.
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