Viktor Perelman, a Russian-Jewish journalist who was fired from the editorial staff of Moscow’s Literaturnaya Gazeta after he applied for a visa to emigrate to Israel, was arrested in a Moscow street but released after a few hours when he refused to answer questions, Jewish sources in the Soviet Union reported today.
Perelman recently advised Jewish academicians not to pay the excessive visa fees recently levied on educated Jews seeking visas to emigrate. The sources reported that he was picked up in the street by police and taken to headquarters. They said he refused to sign a document that was incriminating or to answer questions of a personal nature which, he insisted, the police had no right to ask.
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.
