Avital Shcharansky, wife of Prisoner of Conscience Anatoly Shcharansky, said here yesterday that she has been “unable to independently verify a report from Moscow” that her husband has ended the hunger strike he began last September 26. She called upon Soviet Communist Party leader Yuri Andropov to “allow me personally to go to the Soviet Union and see my husband, together with my mother-in-law, Ida Milgrom.”
Mrs. Shcharansky made this appeal at a news conference convened by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry and the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. She was responding to reports that Andropov, in a letter to French Communist Party leader Georges Marchais, stated that Shcharansky had ended his hunger strike, that he is in “a satisfactory condition,” and that “recently he was in contact with his mother.”
CONTINUES TO FEAR FOR ANATOLY’S LIFE
Mrs. Shcharansky told the news conference: “I have been told that Ida Milgrom has not visited Anatoly in prison and, furthermore, that there is no evidence that he has ended his hunger strike. Until such time as my family and my trusted and loyal friends can confirm these facts for me, I continue to fear for Anatoly’s life.”
Mrs. Shcharansky also asked that U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz intervene on her behalf and expedite her requested visit to her husband in Chistipol prison. She added: “In light of the above information I appeal to Yuri Andropov to immediately take the necessary measures to secure the proper medical treatment for my husband, and to order the release of Anatoly Shcharansky, who has been struggling his entire (adult) life for the rights of Jews to leave the USSR and to emigrate to Israel.”
Mrs. Shcharansky said that Mrs. Milgrom has been denied permission to visit Anatoly in Chistipol prison, 500 miles from Moscow. She also said that Mrs. Milgrom had recently received a censored letter from her son stating that he would continue his hunger strike if contact with his family was not resumed, and that he needed treatment in a hospital. The letter was the first that Mrs. Milgrom had received from her son in over a year.
The news conference yesterday was held in cooperation with the Committee of Concerned Scientists, the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, and the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
