British MP Greville Janner, honorary secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Committee for the Release of Soviet Jewry, and Mayor John V. Lindsay jointly called on Soviet authorities to “comply with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to release all those Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate to Israel.”
Janner and his wife, Myra, who is in this country for a vacation, met yesterday with Lindsay at the mayor’s office to discuss in particular the plight of Dr. Benyamin Levich, a leading Soviet physicist, who has been denied permission to emigrate to Israel. Lindsay met with the Leviches and other representatives of the Soviet Jewish community during a recent trip to the USSR. Since then Dr. Levich’s 25-year-old son, Evgeny, was forcibly inducted into the army and sent to the Arctic region despite being seriously ill.
Lindsay was presented with a recent picture of Evgeny showing him in a uniform holding a sledgehammer in midair as he is about to bring it down on wooden stakes. Janner said that Dr. and Mrs. Levich have informed him that Evgeny’s physical condition has deteriorated and they fear that he will not be able to endure the harsh Arctic winter. “Responsible public pressure on behalf of Soviet Jewry must continue,” Lindsay said. “And we must especially assure the Leviches that they are not alone in their struggle to secure Evgeny’s release from army service and emigrate to Israel.”
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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.
