World Brailovsky Committee Formed

An International Committee for the Release of Dr. Victor Brailovsky has been formed, following the arrest Nov. 13 in Moscow of the 45-year-old cyberneticist for “anti-Soviet slander.” Brailovsky was the editor of the underground journal, “Jews in the Soviet Union.” He has been one of the major spokesman for the Jewish emigration and cultural movements in the Soviet Union since he and his wife, Irina, were denied permission to emigrate to Israel in 1972. The charge against him is punishable by three years in prison.

According to Lynn Singer, the International Committee’s director, the organization comprises scientists, authors and journalists. Honorary co-chairmen are the former editors of “Jews in the Soviet Union” who are now in Israel. They are Prof. Alexander Luntz and Rafail Nudelman. American groups cooperating with the Committee are the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry.

Meanwhile, Dr. Arno Penzias, the 1978 Nobel laureate in physics, and New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams have joined a group of prominent American scientists, academicians and human rights activists to protest the arrest of Brailovsky. The group released the text of a telegram to Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev urging him to intervene personally in the case and obtain Brailovsky’s release.

The telegram, which also noted that Brailovsky’s arrest had taken place during the week when delegates from North America, Europe and the Soviet Union were meeting in Madrid to discuss the Helsinki Accords, was released here at a news conference by Dr. Seymour Lachman, chairman of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, which cosponsored the event with the National Conference on Soviet Jewry in cooperation with the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.