Lasar Rulew-Kagan, a Soviet Jew believed by his family in Leningrad to be missing for the past two years, is serving a 12-year sentence in a Soviet hard labor camp. According to the Frankfurt-based International Association for Human Rights, the Soviet authorities have only just informed the family that the 40-year-old Lasar, a musician, was sentenced in January, 1983.
He is the son of the Jewish pianist and composer Simon Kagan who lives in West Germany. The human rights group said he was sentenced to 12 years’s hard labor for alleged black marketeering but the real reason was his efforts to obtain an exit visa to emigrate to Israel. According to the group, he is an inmate of the Burepolom labor camp near Gorki and is being mistreated.
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.
