Relatives of Emigration Applicants to Be Implicated in ‘conspiracy’

Jewish activists in Moscow say that Soviet authorities have devised means by which they can implicate relatives of emigration applicants in “anti-Soviet conspiracy,” it was reported today by Dr. David Korn, chairman of the Soviet Jewry Committee of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington. Under the new procedures, in effect as of last Thursday, applicants now need statements from parents or closest relatives giving “permission” for emigration. Dr. Korn said.

The new rule causes parents and relatives to “also be considered undesirables” subject to loss of jobs, apartments or education, thus seeming to “place more hardship on those who remain than on those who apply to leave, so as to stop Jewish emigration completely,” Dr. Korn said. He noted that in cases of mixed marriage or conversion, permission signatures would implicate the signers in what the government calls “anti-Soviet conspiracy.”