Levich Ill, Eight Jews Beaten, Boguslavsky Released from Potma

Jewish sources here and in London reported this weekend that Evgeny Levich has had attacks of intestinal disorders and has lost consciousness several times that eight Moscow Jewish activists were severely beaten by Russian prison guards while serving a 16-day sentence for a public demonstration, and that Jewish prisoner Victor Boguslavsky was released several days ago from Camp 19 of the Potma forced labor camp in Mordovia.

The National Conference on Soviet Jewry reported that Prof. Yuval Neeman, president of Tel Aviv University, in a telephone conversation with sources in the Soviet Union learned that Levich has been given no medical aid for his intestinal disorder or after losing consciousness while working in the Siberian labor camp. According to the sources, when Levich blacked out he was transferred to the medical center in Tisksi on the Laptev Sea several hundred miles above the Arctic Circle, but the doctors there received orders from the KGB to return him to work.

According to reports reaching here, Jewish sources in Moscow said that the eight Jewish activists who were beaten had protested Soviet government refusal to let them emigrate to Israel. The beatings, according to the report, took place June 29, the day after the eight were arrested in a Moscow subway for displaying signs saying, “I want to go to Israel.” They were finally released Friday.

Reporting on the case of Boguslavsky Jewish sources in the Soviet Union said he was transferred from Potma to Leningrad and then set free but is not allowed to live in Leningrad. He is presently residing outside the city in Luga. During his short stay in Leningrad, the sources said, Boguslavsky submitted an application for an emigrant permit, He was sentenced to three years imprisonment during the second Leningrad trial in May 1971.

In other developments Jewish sources in the Soviet Union reported that Boris Penson, who is serving a 10-year term in Camp 19 in Potma, has been threatened that he will be transferred to the camp in Perm where conditions are harsher. The reason for this threat was not immediately known. Galina Khantsis, daughter of Yosef Khantsis, wrote to the commandant of the camp in Kirov where her father is imprisoned stating that she has not received any mail from him for a considerable time. The commandant’s evasive reply has given rise to anxiety about Khantsis’ health. The latter was transferred recently from a psychiatric hospital to the camp in Kirov.