I want to call my colleagues attention today to the case of Benjamin Bogomolny. Benjamin Bogomolny is a 35yearold mathematician who was prevented from leaving the Soviet Union with his family in 1970 and subsequently has been harassed repeatedly. Bogomolny first applied for an exit visa in 1966 along with his parents. When his parents and his three sisters received visas in 1970. Bogomolny was instead drafted into the Soviet Army. After his discharge in 1972. he reapplied for an exit visa but was refused under a Soviet law which prohibits emigration within 5 years of serving in the Army. Bogomolny now has been out of the army for 9 years but still is not permitted to be reunited with his family. In these 9 years. his apartment has been ransacked and his possessions painted red. his books on Judaism have been confiscated. and his telephone service has been disconnected repeatedly. When Bogomolny helped organize a symposium on Jewish culture in 1976. he was searched by Soviet officials and all correspondence pertaining to the symposium was confiscated. This unjust treatment violates the Helsinki Final Act and I rise today to express my very deep concern for the basic rights and the wellbeing of Benjamin Bogomolny. The case I have described today is evidence that mistreatment of Jews wishing to emigrate from the Soviet Union really is not limited to the betterknown cases of Anatoly Scharansky. Viktor Brailovsky. and others. As the Congressional Vigil on Soviet Jewry helps document. this tragic problem is all too common.
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emigrate emigration visas visa