Two Russian Jews Go on Trial Later This Month; Kroncher Expelled from Institute

Two Russian Jews will go on trial this moth in Kharkov and Odessa, Jewish sources reported today. They said the trial of Alexander Gorbach. 34, of Kharkov has been postponed until the end of the month because he has become ill in jail. The sources said that 35-year-old Roiza Palatnik, a librarian arrested in Odessa last Dec., may go on trial tomorrow but as of today this could not be confirmed. They identified her prosecutor as Dotsenko, first name not known. Jewish sources reported that a 36-year-old economist, Allan Kroncher, was expelled from the Plekhanov Institute of Economics and stripped of his academic rank after he applied for a character reference needed to obtain an exit visa for Israel. According to the report Kroncher was told that his appointment to the Institute was terminated.

Subsequently, Kroncher’s colleagues decided at a meeting to deprive him of his academic title, “candidate of economic sciences,” because he was expelled for “misbehavior.” The title is equivalent to an MS in economics. According to reports today from Wilna, 70 Jews who staged a sit-in at local Communist Party headquarters on two successive days last week were dispersed by police. No arrests were made. The Jews demanded an audience with a Ministry of interior official to find out why their applications for exit visas were delayed. The Gorbach case has been reported earlier. He was arrested for the second time last month after serving a 15 day jail term in March for demonstrating outside the chief prosecutor’s office in Moscow to protest the trials of Jews. According to some sources he went on a hunger strike and was force-fed with a mixture of milk, butter and sugar. Gorbach was subsequently released and re-arrested on May 7.