About 300 people, many of them youngsters, gathered outside the Soviet Embassy shortly after noon yesterday to mark the 32nd birthday of Anatoly Shcharansky and to protest his continued confinement in a Soviet prison.
The demonstration, sponsored by the Soviet Jewry Committee of the Greater Washington Jewish Community Council, was addressed by Rabbi Rubin Landman of Congregation Har Tzion-Agudath Achim and Rev. John Steinbruch of the Luther Place Memorial Church. Landman, Steinbruch and Norman Goldstein, chairman of the Soviet Jewry Committee, attempted to deliver birthday cards for Shcharansky to the Embassy. An Embassy employee came to the gate but refused to accept the cards on grounds that he was authorized only to receive mail in diplomatic pouches.
The cards, addressed to Shcharansky at Chistopol Prison in Moscow, will be mailed. A shofar was blown to mark the occasion. Landman said, “We blow the shofar as a symbol of protest and outrage at the callousness and cruelty of a government which directs its power to crush the Jewish spirit. We appeal to the soul and conscience on the Soviet Union for compassion and justice.” Steinbruch told the assembled group, “We must keep the promise alive for Anatoly Shcharansky. We are his tie to the future. We must not be weakened.”
The protestors distributed leaflets to passers by urging that Shcharansky and other “prisoners of conscience” be freed and allowed to emigrate Shcharansky was arrested in March 1977 and sentenced in July 1978 to 13 years’ imprisonment for alleged treason and anti-Soviet activities. He is reportedly in ill health.
URGES MAILING BIRTHDAY CARDS
In New York, Burton Levinson, president of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, announced a campaign to “make certain that Anatoly knows that he has not been forgotten.” He said birthday greetings should be sent in the form of cards, letters or cables to: Anatoly Shcharansky, UCHR 511110/1, Moscow, RSFSR, USSR.
In addition, noted Levinson, March 15 will mark Shcharansky’s third year of imprisonment, at which time he is expected to be transferred from the rigors of Chistopol Prison to an undesignated labor camp to carry out the rest of his sentence. He noted that messages and appeals should be sent to Soviet authorities urging that Shcharansky be released and allowed to emigrate to Israel rather than transferred as scheduled, to a labor camp.
Also in New York, the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry staged a march yesterday to the Soviet Mission to the United Nations where protestors chanted “Unhappy birthday, Anatoly Shcharansky–Let my people go.” Earlier, the group demonstrated outside the new million-dollar Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters three blocks away where they shouted “Hell no PLO–PLO has to go,” and carried placards stating “New York’s newest bomb factory,” and “Murder Inc. on East 65th Street.”
SHCHARANSKY’S FATHER SUFFERS FATAL HEART ATTACK
Meanwhile, Genya Intrator, vice president of the Canadian Committee on Soviet Jewry, reported today from Toronto that Boris Shcharansky, Anatoly’s father, died yesterday while on his way to the apartment of Prof. Alexander Lerner where a ceremony was to be held for Anatoly’s birthday. Mrs. Intrator said the elder Shcharansky, 75, suffered a heart attack while on a trolley bus en route from Istra, the Moscow suburb where he resided. His wife, Ida Milgrom, was at Lerner’s apartment at the time.
Mrs. Intrator said the activists continued with the program since they considered it important. She said they plan to ask Soviet authorities to allow Anatoly to attend is father’s funeral, tentatively scheduled for Wednesday.
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.
