Lev Furman, a 13-year refusenik from Leningrad, received an exit visa Friday for himself, his wife, Marina, and their 10 month-old daughter, Aliya, the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry reported here Sunday.
Two other long-term refuseniks, Professor Alexander Lerner, a computer scientist, and Professor Alexander Ioffe, a mathematician, are due to arrive soon in Israel, according to reports from Tel Aviv.
Lerner, who was fired from his teaching post when he first applied for an exit visa 16 years ago, left Moscow for Vienna Sunday, accompanied by his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. They are scheduled to arrive in Israel on Monday.
Ioffe, dismissed from his Moscow University post 12 years ago after applying for a visa, was due Sunday night. He has a teaching and research job at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, which has been kept open for him for 10 years.
Similarly, Lerner will take a job that has been awaiting him at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.
Furman, 40, was a low level technician at a Soviet research institute when he quit his job 14 years ago, before applying for permission to leave the Soviet Union. He was refused on grounds that he possessed state “secrets.” In the interim, he became one of Leningrad’s leading Jewish activists and an unofficial teacher of Hebrew.
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