Rabbi Israel Miller, president of the American Zionist Federation, has asked Anatoly F. Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to the US, to ask the Kremlin to release Soviet Jewish prisoner Sylva Zalmanson Kuznetsov, who is serving a 10-year sentence for an alleged skyjacking attempt. In a cable to Dobrynin in Washington, Rabbi Miller said: “The condition of her health continues to deteriorate and humanitarian considerations dictate her immediate release. Positive and immediate action on the part of your government may serve to save her life and will also redound to the benefit of the Soviet Union.” Rabbi Miller further asked the envoy to inform him of “any steps you take to effectuate this request made purely on humanitarian grounds.”
Meanwhile, 65 Jews of Moscow, Leningrad and Tbilisi have petitioned Soviet President Nikolai V. Podgorny to free Mrs. Kuznetsov, Jewish sources here said today. Because of her poor physical condition, the appeal stated, her 10-year term amounts to a death sentence. Glenn Richter, national coordinator of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, reported today that the 27-year-old Jewish engineer was being denied the three conjugal visits a year granted by the Soviet authorities. Her husband, Edvard Kuznetsov, 31, is serving a 15-year labor camp sentence on the same charges, reduced from the original death penalty.
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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.
