United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim met with Jewish activists at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., today and promised to pursue personally the case of Prof. Michael Eppelman, the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry reported. Eppelman left Leningrad for Israel a year ago, but his wife and small daughter have not been allowed to go. Eppelman was scheduled to start a hunger strike today–Universal Children’s Day–at the Geneva headquarters of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Concurrently, his wife, Paulina, prepared to start a hunger strike in Leningrad. She issued an appeal of the UN Human Rights Commission decrying the “monstrous” Soviet policy of thwarting the “natural desire” and “legal right” of a child to be with her father. Her daughter, Julia, is 8. The prearranged SSSJ meeting with Waldheim was held in the office of Rutgers president Edward Blaustein and was attended by board chairman Archibald Alexander. Waldheim accepted two Bibles and said he would try to have them delivered to Soviet Jewish prisoners Sylva Zalmanson Kuznetsov and Raiza Palatnik.
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