A group representing the Universities Committee for Soviet Jewry demonstrated peacefully outside the Soviet Embassy today to protest the alleged mistreatment of Leonid Kolchinsky, a 19-year-old Jewish youth from Kharkov who, reportedly, was forcibly drafted into the Red Army after he expressed a wish to go to Israel. The group left a letter at the Embassy stating that according to their latest information, Kolchinsky has been sent to a “corrective camp” in Siberia and is suffering from pneumonia. Mrs. Lena Volkova, a Soviet emigre from Kharkov who knew the Kolchinsky family, said the young man was drafted for military service after he renounced his Soviet citizenship and said the only country he would fight for was Israel. According to Mrs. Volkova he was ordered to report for duty in 24 hours but before he could he was badly beaten, arrested and jailed for 20 days for “causing a disturbance.” Once in the Army he was told he would be sent to the Chinese front. Instead he was sent to a “corrective camp” for “drunkards and hooligans,” Mrs. Volkova reported.
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