Report Reveals Soviet Jews Defy Officials on All Issues Pertaining to Judaism

Soviet Jewish students sing Israeli songs in public places, wear Israeli-flag lapel pins and in general are “contesting and defying the Soviets on every issue pertaining to Judaism,” according to an eye-witness report by an American Jewish student who recently visited the Soviet Union. He also reported being involved in a Simchat Torah celebration in Leningrad in which uniformed policemen savagely attacked Russian Jewish student participants. The report, made by Zev Zaroslavsky, a member of the California Students for Soviet Jews and a student at the University of California here, was published in a number of Jewish student radical publications in this country and Canada. Reporting that “defiance of the Soviet anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic policy has become a way of life for increasing numbers of Soviet Jews in recent months,” the UCLA student stated that “the Russian Jew is becoming a serious factor with which the Soviets must contend. He is becoming nationalistic and accordingly more eager to express his culture at every given opportunity.” One of those opportunities is the observance of Simchat Torah, during which, in recent years, many thousands of Soviet Jews have openly demonstrated their Jewish identity in many Soviet cities.

Mr. Zaroslavsky said Russian Jews, particularly young Jews, “look forward to this day for it affords them their only opportunity to openly demonstrate their Jewishness and their love for Israel. This is something that normally cannot be done without the risk of suffering fates similar to those of the imprisoned Boris Kochubievsky,” the Jewish engineer sent to prison for seeking to emigrate with his family to Israel, or Ilya Ripps, the Riga youth who sought to immolate himself in protest against Soviet anti-Jewish policies and whose fate is not known to the west. When thousands of young Russian Jews converged on a Leningrad synagogue for the Jewish holiday, they found it had been barricaded by police, as was the street. At the same time, police diverted traffic into Lermontovsky Prospect, the street on which the synagogue is located. Five minutes later, the police moved in to disperse the Jewish crowd, by then about 4,000.

Moving up the street, the students sang “Havenu Sholem Aleichim,” and Russian songs praising Israel. “At this point, a uniformed policeman began attacking a Jewish student. A host of policemen came to the officer’s assistance, savagely beating, kicking and dragging the student across the street.” Another Jewish student was similarly assaulted and the two students were pinned against a barred gate and choked by three plainclothesmen. Both students kept yelling, in Yiddish, “I am a Jew,” every time they had the chance to do so. Widespread clashes then broke out between police and the Jews. Mr. Zaroslavsky reported a friend, Gene Alexander, another American visitor who came to Leningrad to participate in the festivities, was manhandled by five Soviet plainclothesmen in front of three uniformed Leningrad policemen who did not come to his assistance. In fighting back “and in not taking the attack by the police lying down,” the students reacted with new defiance, Mr. Zaroslavsky reported. He added that “three years ago they would not have fought back” nor would they have “defiantly danced in the streets of Leningrad.”