An official of the World Jewish Congress has strongly protested the treatment of a visiting Israeli professor by the director of the a visiting Israeli professor by the director of the new Jewish cultural center in Moscow, where the Israeli was scheduled to lecture.
“I am embarrassed and appalled at the way you and your colleagues appear to have treated a man who was sent to the Soviet Union on behalf of the World Jewish Congress,” wrote Isi Leibler, WJC vice president, to Mikhoels Center director Mikhail Gluz.
Leibler has also threatened to withhold promised funds, which were earmarked to provide a replica of an exhibit at the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv, and an audio-visual center.
He said the WJC will seek alternative premises in Moscow for the museum, and “we have little doubt that the Soviet government at the highest levels is willing to cooperate with us,” he wrote in his letter of May 31.
Leibler, who lives in Australia, was referring to a report from Professor Yaacov Roi upon his return to Jerusalem.
Roi was in the Soviet Union with other Israelis, including former refuseniks, to attend an emigration conference in Moscow at which he spoke on “The Historical Link Between Soviet Domestic Developments and Jewish Emigration.”
The Israelis received their visas late and missed most of the conference.
They were also late for the subsequent conference of Jewish representatives in Riga because of complications arranging the trip to Riga, Roi reported.
Roi returned to Moscow May 23, where he was slated to speak at the center under the auspices of the Jewish Cultural Association. He was to lecture and return to Israel that day.
Roi said he was told upon arrival that Gluz had not given permission for him to speak and had left town. His assistant, wrote Roi, told over 20 people who came to hear him that the lecture would not take place.
“Gluz’s pretext had been that it was scheduled for midday, while normally events take place in the evenings,” Roi wrote, “but the people who met me there said that the real reason was that I am an Israeli and that my topic was an Israeli one.”
Glus is musical director of the Moscow Jewish Musical Theater and travels frequently with the troupe, which has been to the United States, Australia and Israel.
Gluz’s activities have been suspect by Soviet Jewry activists, who believe he receives travel privileges because of his cooperation with government authorities.
Roi succeeded in giving his talk in a small room, in which the 25 to 30 people who attended scarcely fit.
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