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Soviet Jew Given Permit to Go to Israel then Denied Exit Visa; Appeals for Help

May 28, 1970
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Another Russian Jew has appealed to Israel’s Premier Golda Meir for aid in coming to Israel. Aron Solomonovich Bogdanovsky, 34, of Kharkov, related his prolonged and so far fruitless struggle with the Soviet bureaucracy to obtain an exit visa in a long letter to Mrs. Meir made public here today. Bogdanovsky, who says he has no family in Russia but was invited to live with an uncle in Israel, claimed that he was given a permit to go to Israel last Sept. 12. But when he applied for an exit visa he was turned down because the Ministry of Culture officials did not like the list of books he asked to be permitted to take with him. He wrote that on the strength of his permit he had sold his apartment and liquidated most of his possessions “for a pittance.” He left his job and cannot get another. He is destitute and living on money borrowed from friends. Bogdanovsky said he has appealed for help to Premier Alexei N. Kosygin, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet and International Red Cross, the Minister of Interior and even to the government newspaper, Izvestia. He said he has received no reply from any of those sources. He said the only reply he gets periodically is from visa bureau and the reply is always “no.”

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