NEWS

Andrei Sakharov Called A Hero
To Jewry, Emigration Movement

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Andrei Sakharov speaks with reporters at the Moscow train
station.

ISR

sews

London (JTA) — Andrei
Sakharov, the Soviet human
rights champion, is a hero to
world Jewry and to the Soviet
Jewish emigration move-
ment, according to reports
here last week. He has not on-
ly spoken out for the right to
emigrate to Israel but has
stoutly defended the Jewish
State and Zionism at a time
when both are reviled by his
own country.
This emerges from a record
of his support for Jewish
causes published before his
release from internal exile, by
the Institute of Jewish Af-
fairs, the research arm of the
World Jewish Congress.
Writing in the Institute's

Journal of Soviet Jewish Af-
fairs, William Korey, director

of the B'nai B'rith's Interna-
tional Policy Research, recalls
that as early as 1968, the
then 47-year old physicist
raised the Jewish issue on
both internal and external
levels.
He sharply attacked the
backsliding into anti-
Semitism in the appoint-
ments policy of the Soviet
Communist Party and said
Soviet support for the Arabs
had given Moscow a direct
responsibility for the out-
break of the Six Day War.
In the Leningrad and Riga
trials of Jewish activists,
Sakharov assumed a promi-

100 Friday, January 2, 1987

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

nent, if not central, role in the
struggle for fundamental
freedoms. On December 24,
1970, a Leningrad court
handed down Harsh verdicts,
including two death senten-
ces for an attempted plane
hijacking.
Four days later, Sakharov
appealed to President Pod-
gorny to prevent the execu-
tion of Mark Dymshits and
Eduard Kuznetsov. He
pointed to extenuating cir-
cumstances, noting that the
group did not endanger any-
body's life.
Sakharov's protest was
taken seriously. When the ap7
peal of the Leningrad Eleven
was heard before the Soviet
Supreme Court in Moscow, he
was admitted into the court-
room and was able to inform
Western reporters of the
revocation of the death
penalties and the reduction of
other sentences.
It was there, too,_ that he
met Yelena Bonner, a relative
of the Kuznetsov's, who later
became his wife and was to
share his exile to the closed ci-
ty of Gorky. Sakharov him-
self was born into a Russian
Orthodox family. Yelena Bon-
ner had a Jewish mother an
Armenian father.
On March 19, 1971, Sak-
harov turned to the question
of antiJewish discrimination
in employment and higher

education made possible by
the internal passport system
prevailing in the USSR which
records citizens nationality.
Together with two other
leading academics he ap-
pealed to the Soviet leader-
ship to abolish registration of
nationality in passports and
questionnaires.
In 1971, too, he questioned
the Soviet official view of
Zionism and the Jewish
desire to go to Israel. As a
member of the Soviet Com-
mittee on Human Rights, he
associated himself with a let-
ter defending Zionism against
the Soviet press description
of it as reactionary and prac-
tically fascist.
In 1972, Sakharov again in-
tervened physically on a
Jewish issue when, after the
massacre of Israeli Olympic
athletes in Munich, he joined
a small group of Jewish ac-
tivists demonstrating in front
of the Lebanese Embassy in
Moscow. The protest against
the massacre has quickly
ended by the police who ar-
rested the demonstrators, in-
cluding Sakharov.
In 1973, he intervened over
the much more politically
sensitive issue of American
trade credits for the Soviet
Union by supporting the
Jackson-Vanik amendment in
Congress linking U.S.
economic concessions to a
relaxation on Soviet
emigration.
From time to time in the
mid-1970's, Anatoly Shchar-
ansky had acted as Sak-
harov's secretary and trans-
lator. Following the arrest of
the young computer special-
ist on espionage charges,
Sakharov spoke out for him
and vouched for his
innocence.
As Shcharansky's trial un-
folded in mid-July 1978,
Sakharov joined a crowd of
150 protesters outside the
courtroom and, as the defen-
dant was finally rushed away
to prison without being given
a last meeting with his
mother, Sakharov shouted ct
the police. "You are not peo-
ple. You are fascists."
Eighteen months later,
Sakharov and Yelena Bonner
themselves were banished to
Gorky. Korey concludes,
"Among the reasons for the
KGB's . determination to
silence him, no doubt his ad-
vocacy of Jewish rights and
of Israel was an important
one."

Packages

New York — More than
4,000 Jewish ceremonial ob-
jects and holiday gift items
were shipped by JWB to
Jewish military personnel and
their families around the world
and Jewish patients in VA
hospitals in preparation for the
beginning of Chanukah.

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