Two American Jewish couples who arrived here from Moscow last night said they were expelled from the Soviet Union after being detained by police at Moscow airport, stripped and searched. Mr. and Mrs. Bert Braverman and Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Alpert of Highland Park, Ill., said taped and filmed records of their three-week visit to the Soviet Union which included interviews with Jews in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev were confiscated and that KGB (secret police) agents copied the names of their Russian-Jewish contacts.
They said the material seized from them included pleas from Russian Jews for American support in emigrating from the USSR. According to the Americans, the Soviet police refused to allow them to contact the US Embassy as they had demanded. Alpert said the four had gone to Russia “because we were interested in the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union.”
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.
