Two college students and three high school students, all Jewish, chained themselves to the Soviet Embassy yesterday to dramatize their plea to the Kremlin to allow Jewish emigration to Israel. It took the police 52 minutes to sever their chains. The Washington students, aged 16 to 18, were booked at police headquarters. In addition to the chaining, they had smeared on themselves and the embassy five pints of what they described as their own blood. Declaring that they were “just young Americans, not revolutionaries,” and “representing only ourselves,” the five issued a statement calling on the Soviet Union to act on emigration in observance of Lenin’s 100th birthday anniversary and the first day of Passover. “Even Pharaoh let the Jews go,” they asserted. This was the third group, and the first with high schoolers’ participation, to demonstrate at the Soviet Embassy since last November. The first two were from Philadelphia and Washington.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
