The harassment of Jews seeking to emigrate from the Soviet Union continues without abatement. Jewish sources here informed the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The sources gave the names of Jews in several Russian cities who they said were fired from their jobs or expelled from professional organizations after applying for visas to go to Israel. They also reported that a Jewish lecturer at the Pedagogical Institute at Teselinograd, Naum Sheffer, was arrested last month and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for allegedly slandering the Soviet Union.
The sources said that Grigory Sversky, a Jewish writer was ousted from the writers organization after applying for an exit visa and two painters, Yuri Superman and Igor Galanin were ordered to turn in their membership cards in the artists organization. Superman and Galanin have appealed to the central organization in Moscow to have their membership restored.
Nalina Polishchuk, a teacher at a radio-technical institution and Aleksander Lifshitz, 34, head of the Electro-Technical Institute in Novosibirsk were fired after applying for emigration. Lifshitz was called a traitor by his colleagues when he asked for the character reference required of all visa applicants. His 63-year-old father, Solomon, a lecturer at the institute, was dismissed and forced to resign from another post he held. Lev Gendin, chief engineer at an automation laboratory was fired Oct. 27 after applying for a visa. His superior, Vasmanov, called him a hostile element when he asked for a character reference.
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.
