Soviet Jewish Prisoner of Conscience Iosif Mendelevich is in his third month of a hunger strike in the Perm labor camp, it was reported here today by Soviet Jewry organizations. The 33-year-old Orthodox Jew is the only remaining Jewish prisoner from the 1970 Leningrad trial of a group that planned to steal a Soviet plane to fly to freedom.
He began his hunger strike to demand that his religious books and ritual articles confiscated by camp authorities be restored and that he be allowed to observe the Sabbath. Moscow Jewish activists reported that Mendelevich was force-fed after fasting for two weeks and that camp officials had planned to repeat the action every 10 days.
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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.
