Gavriel Shapiro, the Moscow Jewish activist serving a one-year “corrective labor” sentence for alleged draft evasion, was fired from his State-assigned Job which he started Just a week ago and faces possible imprisonment if he is unable to find another Job, his American wife, Judith Silver Shapiro informed the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today.
Mrs. Shapiro phoned the JTA from the Jewish Community Center in St. Louis after a telephone conversation with her husband in Moscow. She said he told her he was summoned yesterday by the director of the automotive manufacturing plant where he worked and told he was dismissed “due to rescheduling.” Shapiro, an engineer, was employed in the brake products division where he was required to lift parts weighing as much as 200 pounds, Mrs. Shapiro said.
He was required, under his sentence, to remit 20 percent of his wages to the State. As long as he does not work the terms of his sentence cannot be carried out, and therefore may be prolonged. Mrs. Shapiro said she was told that there is a limited category of Jobs that her husband can take under “corrective labor” and that if he is unable to get one he will be Jailed. At present he is living at home.
Mrs. Shapiro said her husband also informed her that nine Jewish scientists of his acquaintance who were fired from their jobs after applying for visas to go to Israel, were visited yesterday by Moscow militiamen at their homes and warned that they might be brought to trial on charges of “parasitism.” The nine included Aleksander Lerner and three women scientists. Julia Shmukler, Tamara Galperin and Dina Belina.
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.
