Top Chilean Jew Gets 13 Years

Daniel Silberman, one of the prominent Jews in the former government of Dr. Salvador Allende Gossens, was sentenced yesterday to 13 years in prison by a Chilean military tribunal sitting in Antofagasta, some 800 miles north of Santiago, according to news reports reaching here from Chile’s capital.

Silberman, who was the director of the country’s nationalized copper mine corporation, Chuquicamata, the largest open-pit copper mine in the world, was one of eight former corporation officials accused of trying to flee the country with funds allegedly taken from the industry’s treasury.

According to the reports Silberman was transferred to an army military academy in Santiago to await a second trial in connection with having operated the mine under the Allende government. The seven other officials sentenced with him received prison terms ranging from 60 days to 20 years. These sentences were the first handed down against former officials.

In addition to those prominent Jews who served in top positions in the Allende government, whose whereabouts remain unknown, a knowledgeable source told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that there was cause for alarm concerning the fate of two more prominent Jews who held important posts in the former government.

The source identified the two as: Jacques Chonchon, Minister of Agriculture, and David Beitleman, vice-president of the corporation of agrarian reform. Both were responsible for implementing the nationalization of the large agricultural estates. It was reported earlier that Volodia Toitlebaum, Communist Party Senator, was safe in Italy, and that Jaime Faivovich, Mayor of Santiago and Under Secretary of the Ministry of Transport, had been granted asylum in the Mexican Embassy in Santiago. None of the Jewish communal institutions has been harmed and the Jewish community continues its activities unhampered.