Medical Committee Mounts Campaign to Free Dr, Stern

The Medical Committee on Soviet Jewry has accused the Soviet Union of “blood libel” against Dr. Mikhail Stern. Dr. Lowell Z. Bello, the New York city Health Commissioner and honorary chairman of the Medical Committee, and Dr. Samuel Korman, chairman, told a news conference in New York that the Soap has started an intensive campaign to force the Russian authorities to free Dr. Stern. The Medical Committee, an affiliate of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, is circulating petitions among thousands of doctors in the metropolitan area on behalf of Dr. Stern,

they said. They also placed a phone call to the local authorities in Vinnitsa to demand his release on grounds of “humanity and Justice.”

It was disclosed meanwhile by the National Conference on Soviet Jewry that nine Jewish activists in Moscow appealed to President Ford during his recent summit meeting with Soviet Communist Party Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev in Vladivostok to Intercede on behalf of Dr. Stern. Their message to Ford also spelled out in detail how Soviet authorities were surreptitiously reneging on the understanding on emigration they had conveyed to Secretary Kissinger.

SYSTEMATIC ISOLATION

According to the activists, the authorities were systematically isolating Jews in provincial cities and towns from Moscow. They are forcing Jews in the provinces to sign undertakings not to apply for exit visas. Jews who refuse to Sign such pledges are threatened with loss of their Jobs and in selected cases, with imprisonment, imprisonment of members of their families or drafting into the armed forces.

In addition, the activists said, the authorities were designating certain large industrial centers as “closed towns” for the purpose of issuing exit visas. The purpose is to frighten or hinder Jews into abandoning their efforts to leave the USSR and thus be able to report fewer visa applicants if questioned by the Americans as to why emigration has dwindled, the activists said.