“He will come, please God, he will come.” With these words Premier Menachem Begin sought tonight to offer encouragement to the aged mother of Yosef Mendelevitch, one of the remaining Prisoners of Zion still held in a Soviet jail. The mother, together with other ex-prisoners, called on Begin at his home to mark the tenth anniversary of the “Leningrad Affair,” the effort of a group of Soviet Jews to seize a plane and flee the country. Most of the group have been released from jail and are now in Israel. But Mendelevitch, who has become Orthodox while in prison, is still there.
Begin revealed that he had pressed Mendelevitch’s case and that of Ida Nudel with President Carter. “But the U.S. does not have any influence over the Soviets today,” he noted sadly.
He said Israel was trying other ways — including contact with a man “who can see (Soviet President Leonid) Brezhnev personally and intercede on behalf of these prisoners.”
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.
