Four New Arrests of Soviet Jews Reported; Total in Recent Months Now 32

Soviet authorities have arrested four Jews known to be friends of Alexander Galperin, who was arrested July 15 with other Soviet Jews for undisclosed reasons, according to authoritative reports reaching here. The arrests bring to 32 the number of Soviet Jews detained in recent months, apparently because they spoke out for the right to emigrate to Israel. The new arrests are significant in that they were made in Kishinev in the Ukraine; of the 28 arrested previously, only Mr. Galperin was from that town. The new arrests, word of which has just reached Western sources, were made shortly after Aug. 16, when the houses of the four were searched and several volumes of the Jewish Encyclopedia were confiscated, although there is no ban against that publication. Of the 32 arrested so far, two have been sentenced. The four newly detained Jews are Arkady Voloshin. David Rabinovich, Abraham Trachtenberg and Harry Kirsiner. It was not immediately known whether they had signed petitions calling for emigration rights. They are believed to be in their 20s or early 30s, as is Mr. Galperin.

In a similar report, Soviet Jews were disclosed to have complained openly that they were the only ethnic group in the Soviet Union “who are ordered in plain terms to assimilate, to dissolve, to disappear among other peoples.” The charge was contained in a letter signed by 83 Moscow Jews appealing to “brother Jews” to unite “to save their brothers and sisters from the destruction which threatens them.” That letter, and another addressed to the delegates at the United Nations General Assembly was distributed to Western newsmen yesterday. Both letters complained of harassment and arrests of some Jews in other cities in recent months and house searches and confiscations of books of Jewish nature. They also complained that Jews were not permitted to live a full cultural and religious life in Russia or to emigrate to their “spiritual homeland. Israel.” The letter to the UN was signed by 77 Jews, most of whom also signed the first letter. The signatories channeled the letters through foreign newsmen because, they claimed, they had no hope of delivery to the UN through the mails.

According to reports from Moscow, the number of Jews allowed to emigrate has declined in recent months to a “handful.” There is no free emigration for any Soviet citizens but applicants are treated on an individual basis and some have been allowed to leave if their departure was not considered contrary to Soviet interests. Until recently about 200 Jews a month were permitted to leave. The letter to “brother Jews” complained that “The Soviet Union has long been without any kind of public organization that could in some measure represent the interests of the Jewish ethnic minority…We declare that forceful assimilation is the same thing as genocide.” (In Jerusalem, it was reported that a Jewish physician in Riga has appealed to Israeli authorities to help him emigrate to Israel with his young children in order to join his parents and a sister already there. A letter from Dr. D. Skorokhod was received by Arieh Eliav, secretary general of the Labor Party. It was addressed to him apparently on the mistaken belief that he still held his former post as Deputy Minister of Immigration. The petitioner wrote that his parents were permitted to go to Israel in 1967 to join a sister who lives in Jerusalem but all his applications to Soviet authorities have been rejected. He said he had worked for over 14 years as a physician in Yakut area of Siberia and in Riga “conscientiously justifying the higher education I received in the Soviet Union.”)