Eight Jews from Sverdlovsk sent a cable Friday to the Soviet Committee for Peace in Moscow asking that they be allowed to discuss with six Israelis now in Russia the case of Valeriy Kukui, the 33-year-old engineer sentenced in June to three years imprisonment for alleged anti-Soviet activities, informed Jewish sources reported here today. The Israelis–members of the Israeli Committee for Improving Relations with the Soviet Union-were invited by the Peace Committee, a government-sponsored unit, to spend two weeks in Russia. The Sverdlovsk Jews wrote in their telegram that Kukui’s only crime was his struggle for the right to go to Israel. They asked the Peace Committee to do its utmost to convince the authorities to grant exit visas to Israel to Kukui, his wife, Ella, his child and his friends who struggled together with him for their right to emigrate. The signers of the telegram to the Peace Committee were his wife, Valadimir Aks, Vira Voitovietsky, Ilya Voitovietsky, Bina Zeevina, Rita Kiselman, Yuli Kocherovsky, and Vladimir Markman.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.