The National Conference on Soviet Jewry said today it learned that Valery Panov has received permission from Soviet authorities to go to Israel on condition that he leaves his wife, Galina, in the Soviet Union. According to the NCSJ, Soviet officials told Panov that his wife was being denied a visa because her father has refused to let her emigrate. Galina is not Jewish.
The NCSJ reported that Panov reportedly was told by Soviet Interior Ministry officials that his wife would be reinstated with the Kirov Ballet Company from which she and her husband had been expelled if she would divorce Valery. Panov’s answer was “I prefer to die rather than to leave her.”
Richard Maass, NCSJ chairman, termed this latest Soviet action “outrageous” and a form of heartless harassment. “Valery Panov and his wife are being brutally and heartlessly crushed by the Soviet government’s persistent refusal to allow them to leave. To even suggest that a man must leave his wife or a woman divorce her husband in order to qualify for the basic human right to live freely in a country of one’s choice, is a perversion of the true meaning of that right,” Maass stated.
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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.
