Wherever Brezhnev’s party moved, demonstrators turned up with placards denouncing Soviet anti-Semitism and demanding emigration rights for Russian Jews. Ten bearded Jews wearing prayer shawls and carrying rams horns occupied the official platform in the Municipal Square moments after the Brezhnev party left the City Hall. Police promptly hustled them into police vans. At the Arch of Triumph, placards demanding freedom for Russian Jews were raised as the Soviet leader paid his respects to France’s war dead. An unspecified number of demonstrators were arrested but later released.
DEMAND RELEASE OF FATHER, SON
As the official party drove up the Champs Elysee, a 19-year-old Russian Jew broke through the police barriers to thrust a letter at Brezhnev demanding the release of his father, Benito Boroukhovin, who was arrested in Moscow last month after he applied for a visa to go to Israel. The youngster, who came from Israel, and 14 of his companions, members of the Paris-based Jewish Student Front, were arrested. About 20 young men were arrested last night after they refused to obey police orders to disperse from the Soviet Embassy. Demonstrations were forbidden in that area.
Embassy officials told a 70-year-old mother from Israel that Brezhnev had no time to see her. Mrs. Molly Renert, a resident of Kiryat Hayim, flew to Paris to petition the Soviet leader on behalf of her son who is imprisoned in Czernowitz for “Zionist” activities. Jean Pierre-Bloch, president of the International League Against anti-Semitism promised to try to deliver her letter to Brezhnev.
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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.
