Witnesses Say Soviet Jews in Concentration Camps for Demanding Right to Emigrate

Three witnesses from the Soviet Union told an international gathering here today that a number of Russian Jews have already been sent to concentration camps or sentenced to prison terms for demanding their right to emigrate and especially for making public appeals in that respect. The witnesses testified in closed session at the European Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry which opened here today attended by more than 300 delegates from 17 countries. Their identities were not disclosed in order to protect the families they left behind in Moscow and Leningrad. The witnesses, two men and a woman, were described as past members of the Komsomols, the Soviet Communist Party youth organization. They described in detail the cases of several Russian Jews who went to jail and whose families were subjected to severe harassment because they had applied for exit permits to go to Israel.

After the testimony was heard the conference adopted resolution urging the Soviet Government to grant Jews “their constitutional rights” and the right “to emigrate to Israel for those who wish to.” It expressed solidarity “with those Jews who face their situation with courage and dignity,” expressed “grave concern” over the “continued deterioration” of the Jewish position in the USSR and recommended that a world conference be called “at the earliest possible date to deal with this burning issue.” The conference was presided over by Claude Kellman, of the French Jewish Consistory, who denounced the Kremlin’s “anti-Semitic campaign of calumny disguised as anti-Zionism,” According to the witnesses a large part of Soviet Jewry wants to emigrate to Israel and thousands have already filed applications to leave. Many of these have been deprived of work and other elemental rights after Soviet authorities turned down their emigration applications, the witnesses said. They described as a dangerous new trend the arrest of Jews who have applied for exit permits, especially those who sent appeals abroad.

Cited as an example of such instances was the case of Mrs. Lilia Abramova Ontman. of Chernovsky, who was arrested in Dec. 1969 and sentenced to two and a half years in prison by a state court last Jan. 8 for “slandering the Soviet Union and insulting the authorities.” Mrs. Ontman had requested permission to emigrate in order to re-unite with her elderly father in Israel. She had also submitted several unsuccessful applications on behalf of her husband, her adopted child and her younger sister. When the authorities rejected them she declared that she no longer considered herself a Soviet citizen and refused her identity card. At her trial she told the court that she based her request on the Soviet Constitution and on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which the USSR is a signatory. After sentencing, her sister was expelled from school and her adopted child was forcibly placed in an institution, the conference was told. Also related was the case of Boris Kochubievsky. a Jewish engineer sentenced to three years in prison in Jan. 1969 for slandering the Soviet Union after he unsuccessfully applied for an exit permit. The witnesses told the conference that Soviet Jews feel themselves to be “a deprived minority.” They lack most cultural and religious needs, mainly synagogues, Jewish books and clubs, the witnesses said.