Judy Silver Shapiro, back in NY after being evicted from the Soviet Union yesterday for lack of a Soviet visa, said today that she was “exhausted” and “disappointed,” but “strong” and still “hopeful” that she would be allowed to attend the draft-evasion trial of her husband, activist Gavriel Shapiro. The trial is scheduled to open in Moscow tomorrow.
Mrs. Shapiro said she had been guarded “at all times” at the Moscow airport, denied water despite the heat, and told “You are on Soviet soil and you have no rights.” After half an hour’s discussion in English, she reported in a statement, the officials “claimed they could not speak English” and ended the conversation. “It was at that moment,” she said today, “that I felt like a Soviet Jew and could understand what my husband meant to be treated ‘mockingly.'”
The 27-year-old Cincinnati social worker reiterated her belief that Shapiro’s trial will be “trumped up” and built on “baseless charges,” with the activist “used as an example to others” not to oppose Soviet policy. She said there would apparently be five witnesses at the trial, four military men for the prosecution and the prisoner’s father. Jacob Shapiro, for the defense.
CHALLENGES NIXON
Mrs. Shapiro complained that “I have had no direct answer from the White House” to her eight requests for a meeting with and intervention by President Nixon. All she has received, she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, have been general assurances from Richard T. Davies, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs.
“Obviously,” Mrs. Shapiro said, “the President is too busy with the multi-billion-dollar trade deals with the Soviet Union” and efforts toward detente to take action on behalf of her husband “and others like him.” She asked President Nixon: “Where are the agreements with the Soviet Union based on humanity and the protection of human and individual rights? Should not the protection of human and individual rights be the foundation for any agreement that this nation signs with the Soviet Union in 1972 and thereafter?”
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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.
