The National Conference on Soviet Jewry has learned of continuing instances of harassment of Soviet Jews and of Soviet authorities minimizing the martyrdom of Jews in the Nazi holocaust of World War II. On Jan. 3, marking the 30th anniversary of the slaughter of 17,000 Jews in a field near a tractor factory in Kharkov in the Ukraine, a group of Jews requested permission to hold a rally at the grave site where all the dead are buried. The town’s authorities refused, on the grounds that rallies could be held only on officially recognized days.
In spite of this, a few Jewish families from Kharkov went to the cemetery on Jan. 3 and left flowers. The police were waiting there for them. They checked their identifications and then let them go. On Jan. 6, four Kharkov Jews, surnamed Greenberg, Karbel, Skobalins and Signievich, were summoned to the KGB and told to stop sending information abroad as to what is happening in Kharkov, otherwise they would be in trouble, The four Jews immediately responded to this threat by issuing a report about their confrontation with the KGB.
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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.
