The Miami office of the American Jewish Congress placed two telephone calls to Kiev yesterday and Monday and received a special Passover message from 34 Jews in that city, the capital of the Soviet Ukraine. The Jews in Kiev, where authorities have barred access to the local synagogue, compared the Soviet Union to ancient Egypt and asserted that now, as then, “We shall overcome.”
The message relayed in the two calls contained the names of 34 Jews who are seeking emigration visas for themselves and their families to go to Israel. The calls were placed by Yosef Yanich, southeastern regional director of the AJCongress, and Judy Silver, a former social worker from Cincinnati. The spokesman for the Kiev Jews was Michael Radomyselsky, a 24-year-old polygraph engineer who applied for a visa last Aug. and has been unemployed since last Sept.
The message said in part, “Our common special seder table stretches thousands of kilometers and is divided by land and water. But we are all together as one…Your support gives us new strength. We shall read the Haggadah at a special table. The Haggadah teaches us to celebrate Pesach like our ancestors when they were slaves in the land of Egypt. But the history of Exodus is not only a history for us. It is reality….Many of us are in prison for wanting to go to Israel. In our modern Egypt, as thousands of years ago, we shall overcome our enemies.”
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