Speech #980107562

Yuriy Andropov. life for Soviet Jews has gotten consistently worse. Today. the oppression of Jews in the Soviet Union is worse than it has been since the days of czarist Russia. The right of Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel and elsewhere in the West is guaranteed by the Helsinki accords. It is also guaranteed by Soviet law. which permits emigration for the purpose of family reunification or repatriation to ones homeland. The past couple of years have seen dramatic reductions in the number of Jews permitted to leave the Soviet Union. In 1982. only 2.688 Jews were allowed to emigrate. That figure. for all of 1982. is less than the amount which left in 1 month in 1979. the peak year for emigration. This year. the statistics are even worse. As of October 1. only 1.070 Jews had been permitted to leave. In some months this year the figure has been less than 100. and it is estimated that the total for the year will be less than 2.000. Yuriy Andropov has closed the gates of freedom. and left behind are an estimated 300.000 to 400.000 Jews who still seek to emigrate. This figure includes those who have applied to emigrate but have been refused. those who have applied and have not received a reply from the Soviet authorities. and those who have the necessary letters of invitation from relatives in Israel. but have not yet started the application process. One such family. which has applied to emigrate but has been refused. and whose case I have adopted. is the Raiz family of Vilna. Lithuanian SSR. Vladimir and Carmella Raiz first applied to emigrate to Israel in 1972. Vladimir has a sister in Israel. so the request was legal under the provision which permits emigration for purposes of family reunification. Vladimir. a molecular biologist. worked at the Institute of Molecular Biology in Vilna. Carmella is a concert violinist. In March 1973. the Raiz family was refused the right to emigrate for security reasons. supposedly related to Vladimirs work at the lab. However. according to the director of the lab. Vladimir never had a security clearance. and therefore did not work on matters related to national security. When his emigration request was denied. Vladimir was fired from his job. and has had little succcess in finding new work. Vladimir and Carmella have been slandered in the local press. harassed by the KGB. and arrested for making a phone call to Israel.