Russian Born Jew, Now Israeli Citizen, Conducts Fast to Protest Soviet Jewish Policy

A pale, slightly built, bespectacled young man wearing a yarmulka began a hunger strike yesterday outside of United Nations headquarters. Yasha Kazakov, 23, who was born in Moscow and went to Israel a year ago, said It would continue until “the combined voice of free people will bring about a change in the attitude of the Soviet Government” toward the Jews. Specifically, young Kazakov is protesting the refusal of Soviet authorities to permit his parents, Joseph and Sofia Kazakov, his brother, Alexander and his sister Vera to Join him in Israel. He also demands freedom to emigrate for his aunt, cousins and grandmother and all Jews who want to leave the USSR. He has urged others to Join his vigil at the Isaiah Wall on United Nations Plaza facing the skyscraper home of the world organization.

Kazakov speaks only Russian and Hebrew and recounted his story through an interpreter who had Joined him in his vigil. He is a student at the Israel Polytechnic Institute in Haifa where he enrolled a year ago after Soviet authorities inexplicably granted him an emigration visa but refused the rest of his family. His father, a 49-year-old economics engineer lost his Job after requesting permission to leave. Last month he and 38 Russian Jews took the unprecedented step of addressing a letter to the Soviet Foreign Ministry pressing for their emigration rights. They made a copy, containing their names, addresses and occupations and made it available to Western newsmen. The letter was subsequently published abroad. Young Kazakov told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that since then, the Soviet government newspaper Izvestia has singled out his father for persecution. “He has lost his Job and has no means of support for my family,” the youth said.

He undertook his fast, he said, to help “the struggle of Soviet Jews” for freedom. “I am proud to identify myself here with their struggle. They are showing great courage in persisting in their demand to allow them to go to Israel in the face of the hostility of the Soviet authorities,” he said, adding, “Their struggle is the struggle of all free people. The Jews of Soviet Russia have a right to call on all free people to raise their voice in their support.” The youth conducts his vigil from seven a.m. to 10 p.m. He sleeps in a mobile trailer provided by friends. The trailer contains his picket signs. About eight young people were with him this morning, though none were fasting.

One man, who identified himself as Alex Schlesinger, a survivor of the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps in World War II, said he joined young Kazakov “to remind the world of a pledge each of us concentration camp inmates made 27 years ago when we sat in the death camps of Europe… that if we ever emerged from the Hitler ordeal, we would never again sit by in silence while Jews anywhere in the world were being persecuted and abused,” Kazakov told the JTA, through an interpreter, that he will return to Israel. “It is my home, where I belong.” But he said he would continue his hunger strike until the UN acts on behalf of Soviet Jews. A number of appeals from Soviet Jews to the UN for help in emigrating to Israel have been forwarded to the UN by Israel’s chief representative, Ambassador Yosef Tekoah. Among them is one from the elder Kazakov. Kazakov will get re-enforcements on Sunday. Students from Jewish day schools and yeshivas will Join his protest in front of the UN,