A group of demonstrators staged a vigil outside the Soviet Embassy today to protest the arrest and tomorrow’s trial of Mark Nashpitz, the 24-year-old Jewish dentist and activist of Moscow who is charged with draft evasion. In addition, 15,000 post cards urging Nashpitz’s release have been sent to the Soviet ambassador, stressing that the youth has merely sought to go to Israel. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which organized the vigil, sent a telegram to Soviet Prosecutor General Roman A. Rudenko condemning Nashpitz’s arrest and demanding his and his mother’s right to emigrate.
(In New York, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry cabled Rudenko on its “concern” over the Nashpitz case, asking him to “not prosecute” the activist and to “insure” his freedom. Several of the NCSJ’s 34 member organizations sent separate, similar appeals.
(The NCSJ also reported that Paulina Eppelman of Leningrad, who has ten times been denied permission for herself and her small daughter to join Prof. Mikhail Eppelman in Israel, has been fired from her pharmacological job for her “immoral action,” i.e., seeking to live with a defector to Israel.
(In Tel Aviv, it was reported six Kovno Jews planned a hunger strike in support of Nashpitz.)
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