Hadassah has appealed to the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva to investigate the sentencing on April 12 of Isaac Shkolnik, a Ukrainian Jewish mechanic, to 10 years of hard labor in a Soviet prison camp on charges of industrial espionage. Rose E. Matzkin, national president, said in her letter Monday to Nail MacDermot, Secretary General of the Jurists body, that witnesses were intimidated during the pre-trial investigation, the defendant did not have a free choice of lawyer, and the trial was transferred from a civil to a closed military court.
According to reports, the espionage charge against Shkolnik was based on brief public contacts which he had with English-speaking tourists. An unskilled laborer with no access to confidential information, Shkolnik claimed that Soviet harassment stemmed from his expressed desire to emigrate to Israel, An earlier charge that accused Shkolnik of spying for England was changed to Israel. Shkolnik, 36, is a native of Vinnetsa in the Ukraine.
The Hadassah appeal also pointed out this is the longest sentence and the most serious charge leveled against a Jew in the Soviet Union since the 1970 hijack trials in Leningrad and may signify a shift in Soviet policy as another device to discourage Jews from applying for visas to Israel.
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