Refusenik Ends Long Hunger Strike; 24 Colleagues Fast for a Day

A Soviet Jewish refusenik ended her 24-day hunger strike Tuesday, three days after 30 Moscow Jews held a one-day fast to protest state-sponsored anti-Semitism.

Anna Kholmiansky of Moscow, 27, concluded her marathon fast after her father, Yakov Yerukhimovich, provided the long-sought consent to allow her to apply to emigrate, according to the Coalition to Free Soviet Jews.

Alan Pesky, coalition chairman, described the consent requirement as “symptomatic of a Soviet legal system that remains arbitrary and repressive.”

Meanwhile, on Saturday, when the Soviets celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the 30 Moscow Jews staged their own hunger strike.

Stephen Solender, executive vice president of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York, learned of the strike Sunday during a telephone conversation with refusenik Allya Zonis, whom he met last month in Moscow.

CONSENT IS AT ISSUE

Zonis, a refusenik since 1985, lost her job as a computer programmer when she applied for a visa. She now works as a cleaning woman and heads a group of refuseniks who are unable to emigrate because of lack of consent by parents or other relatives.

The group issued a declaration of “a one-day hunger strike as a protest against discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union… We protest the violations in treatment of Jews awaiting repatriation to Israel. “We demand the cessation of religious and cultural crushing of Jews. We demand a stop to the provocation (and) propaganda against us in the press and on television.”

When Solender asked Zonis of the Soviet reaction to the declaration, she replied, “There was no reaction.”

Anna Kholmiansky married Aleksander Kholmiansky two years ago. He had served 18 months in a labor camp on a charge of illegal weapons possession that Soviet Jewry activists say is false. They have a five-month-old daughter, Dora.

Aleksander, 37, a computer scientist, first applied to emigrate in 1978. Since then, he has worked as a janitor and has been one of Moscow’s leading Jewish activists, as well as an unofficial Hebrew teacher. Jews from around the country have traveled to study under his intensive language instruction.

He was arrested for “hooliganism” in 1984 during a camping trip in Estonia, according to the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. He was initially accused of tampering with a mailbox and trampling flowers, but his 10-day detention turned into six months while the prosecutor investigated him.

Although his friends had searched his apartment after his arrest to ensure that nothing the authorities would deem suspicious was found, the KGB claimed to have found a pistol and ammunition. He was sentenced to 18 months in labor camp for illegal weapons possession, and fined about $120 for mailbox tampering. During his initial detention, Kholmiansky also staged a long hunger strike.

Her brother-in-law, Mikhail Kholmiansky, a former refusenik, arrived in Israel last summer. He will be in Washington on Dec. 6 to participate in the mobilization for Soviet Jewry at the time of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit conference.