The chairman of the Academic Committee on Soviet Jewry, Prof. Hans J. Morgenthau, yesterday warned Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that if the young Soviet Jewish scientist, Evgeny Levich, were to die as a result of his being illegally conscripted and forced to participate in the rigors of army life in remote Siberia, while being denied medical treatment for various painful intestinal diseases, then the Soviet authorities would have to “bear the same responsibility for his death as if they killed him outright.”
In a telegram to Dobrynin. Prof. Morgenthau expressed the outrage of the members of the Academic Committee at the conscription and the denial of medical treatment to the young scientist, who is the son of a distinguished colleague, Benjamin Levich, Corresponding Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
“Forced to perform hard labor and deprived of medical treatment, his health has deteriorated there substantially. A person with the medical background of Evgeny Levich would be considered unfit for military service in any country. His abduction by Soviet military authorities can only be understood as a further attempt to intimidate scientists who claim the basic right of free movement by making an example of this helpless young man.”
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