A New York Physicians’ Ad Hoc Committee on Soviet Jewry was formed here today in an attempt to obtain medical aid for Ruth Aleksandrovich, the Jewish nurse completing a one-year term in Riga for “anti-Soviet activities.” The Committee’s creation was inspired by a June is press conference here, attended by the prisoner’s mother, Mrs. Rivka Aleksandrovich, at which six kidney specialists said the daughter’s condition was probably “serious, “considering that her personal physician was worried about her health last October and that she has been poorly cared for since. At the press conference, under the auspices of B’nai B’rith, an official of that organization said action to aid miss Aleksandrovich would be taken immediately. A B’nai B’rith spokesman said today that the formation of the Physicians’ Committee 12 days later represented “unusually quick action.”
The Committee will ask President Nixon and the United Nations Secretary General Thant to intervene personally on Miss Aleksandrovich’s behalf “on humanitarian grounds”; transmit pleas to the World Health Organization in Geneva and to top Soviet doctors for permission to visit the prisoner in Jail, and ask all American doctors to act similarly. The Committee will function in coordination with the Medical and Dental Section of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists of the Raphael Society, a Jewish doctors’ organization. Heading the Committee is Dr. Ira Greifer, director of pediatrics at the Hospital of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and director of the National Kidney Foundation, who presented the kidney specialists’ report at the June 16 press conference.
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.
