Scientists Appeal to Brezhnev. Soviet Scientists to Let Jews Emigrate

Eighteen eminent scientists–Jewish and non-Jewish–in the Washington area have appealed to Leonid I. Brezhnev, secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and to eight Soviet scientists to aid Soviet Jewry to live as Jews or emigrate. They also asked for an end to the Leningrad trial and other trials of Jews and for freedom for those imprisoned. A copy of the petition was forwarded to Anatoly F. Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador here, Nobel laureate Julius Axelrod of the National Institute of Health here, was among the signers. Copies of the petition were mailed to Soviet scientists including Pyotyr L. Kapitza and Andrei D. Shakharov of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. More than 700 scientific personnel in the Washington area presented a similar appeal to the Soviet Embassy four months ago, but Embassy officials refused to accept it. In the current appeal, the scientists said they were “resolved to continue protesting until this denial of human rights is completely brought to an end.”