Speech #970020641

Today marks the 50th birthday of the only Jewish woman still held in the Soviet Union as a prisoner of conscience. Ida Nudel. It has been 10 years since she first applied for a visa to leave the Soviet Union for Israel. For the past decade she has been the guardian angel of the prisoners of conscience inside the Soviet Union. caring for them and supporting them in the plight. As a consequence of her efforts on behalf of the Jewish prisoners and as a consequence of her efforts to emigrate. she was convicted of "malicious hooliganism" and sent into Siberian exile. Ida Nudels plight is one that all of us in Congress must deplore. The treatment she and here fellow prisoners of conscience have endured at the hands of the repressive Soviet regime is unacceptable. She must be released from prison and allowed to emigrate to Israel now. As someone committed to the cause of human rights and to the cause of Soviet Jewry. I am honored to join in todays tribute to Ida Nudel. and to be a part of the ever growing number of voices demanding her freedom.e