Nashpitz, Tsitlionok Sent to Siberia

Mark Nashpitz and Boris Tsitlionok, the Moscow activists who each were sentenced last March to five years exile after demonstrating last February near the Kremlin, have been sent to Siberia, it was reported today by the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. Nashpitz, 27, was sent to Chita near the Chinese border, Tsitlionok, 31, was sent to Krasnoyarsk.

The SSSJ also reported that Leningrad activist Lev Zhigun, a nuclear physicist, has been threatened with trial under an unpublished edict of Dec, 25, 1972, banning activities “against state interests.” A SSSJ spokesman said he feared that this edict, used recently in Odessa against Lev Roitbard and in Tbilisi against the Goldstein brothers, “will now be used against Jews in many Soviet cities who seek to leave.”

In another development, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry reported today that Igor Abramovich, a Moscow “refusnik,” was arrested in his home and taken to the militia where he was threatened with charges of parasitism. Abramovich, a radio engineer, who has been trying to emigrate to Israel for almost two years, was told that he would be given a job as a truck loader and that if he refused, he would be tried and sentenced to one year in exile.

Stanley H. Lowell, NCSJ chairman, said that there seems to be a stepped-up trend toward picking up selected “refusniks” and threatening them with charges of parasitism, while at the same time offering them work which is out of their field.

DEMONSTRATION AGAINST PERSECUTION

Meanwhile, scores of protesters–including an actress with Israel’s Habima Theater–staged a demonstration last night at the Bijou Theater in New York to denounce the Soviet Union’s “stepped-up campaign of persecution against Soviet Jews.” The demonstration, coordinated by the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, took place on the final day of the Soviet Film Festival at the Bijou. The film shown yesterday was “Crime and Punishment.”

The protesters included members of constituent agencies of the Greater New York Conference, including the Oceanfront Council on Soviet Jewry. The actress who took part is Dina Roitkop-Podriachik. She and her husband, Eliezer, were permitted to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel in 1971, but were forced to leave their son Uri, 26, behind, Uri is still in Riga, where the family had lived for more than 30 years. He has been repeatedly denied a visa and has been subjected to severe harassment. His mother is in the U.S. to call attention here to the plight of her son, as well as that of the vast numbers of Soviet Jews who want to emigrate from the USSR.

Malcolm Hoenlein, GNYCSJ executive director, said that “it is quite fitting that the demonstration was held during the showing of ‘Crime and Punishment.'” He said “crime and punishment are the watchwords as far as the Soviets’ attitude toward Jews is concerned.”