Some 200 Soviet Jews were reported here today to have staged several Rosh Hashanah actions in which they defied Soviet authorities on the issue of their insistence on the right to emigrate to Israel. In one action, the Jews forced officials to release three Jews who had been arrested outside Moscow’s Choral Synagogue. The American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry said today that in one action, 75 Jews, whose names were not immediately learned, signed a letter demanding to see officials of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and followed up that action with a visit by 110 Jews to the Committee headquarters in Moscow.
They won an admission from a Central Committee official that there were “individual cases” of Soviet Jews who had been denied receipt of affidavits sent to them by relatives in Israel–without which exit documents are refused–and that Jews had been refused exit permits without explanation. The official, Albert Ivanov, head of the administrative section of the Central Committee, also told a delegation of five Jews representing the 110 protesters, that in such cases, the Jews had the right to appeal to the courts.
The Conference said it had been informed that a group of the People’s Police came to the Choral Synagogue on Rosh Hashanah eve and arrested Viktor Maksimenko, 19, Leonid Trilinok, 18, and a third Jew, immediately identified only by his last name, Levin. The three Jews were taken to the local police station and en route, another group of Jews–presumably friends of the three detainees–interceded and exchanged blows with the police. Some 40 Jews then went to see Nikolai Savkinin, chief of the local police station, which is near the Choral Synagogue, and gave him a letter signed by the 110 Jews, protesting the arrests. Conference officials noted that the signatures were arranged within an hour of the arrests. Several hours later Conference officials reported, the three Jews were released.
Conference officials also confirmed reports that Jewish activists openly distributed in Moscow yes-
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