Vilen Zevin, a Jewish lecturer in physics at the Kiev Technical Institute has been suspended following his application for a visa to go to Israel, it was learned from Jewish sources here today. Vilen was accused of “selling himself to the Zionists” when he appeared at a meeting of the physics faculty at the Institute to get the character reference necessary for a visa application.
The committee declared him politically untrustworthy and said it would urge the administration to fire him. Since the meeting. Vilen has not been permitted to meet with his classes or to receive his students’ examination papers, the sources said.
According: to the same sources, Valery Kukui, a Jewish engineer from Sverdlovsk who was sentenced to three years at hard labor last June 15, is suffering severe hardships at a forced labor camp in the Urals. According to information from sources who visited the camp recently, he is forced to work out of doors in temperatures as low as 40 degrees below zero in nothing but his prison uniform.
Kukui’s outer garments were stolen and the prison authorities have refused to replace them, the sources reported. They said further that Kukui is beaten almost daily by fellow prisoners and was once assaulted while he slept. He has not been allowed visitors for two months because of an alleged minor infraction of prison rules.
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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.
