It Is appaling to me as a citizen of the free world that innocent people are imprisoned and tortured. both physically and emotionally. in a modern day inquisition. Their only crime is that they were born Jewish. Countless Soviet Jews apply for emigration visas each day. The Soviet Government. however. has continued to deny exit visas to the majority of applicants despite its endorsement of the Helsinki accords on international human rights. In fact. emigration figures dropped from a high of 51.000 in 1979 to a frightening 464 this year. The Iron Curtain has been drawn and we must raise our voice in outrage. Let me now relay a story to you of a Jew caught in the web of the Soviet emigration process. This story is not atypical: it is representative of 10.000 Soviet refusniks. Dan Shapira. a 24yearold computer programmer applied for an emigration visa in 1980. He attended the prestigious Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow where he experienced a great deal of antiSemitic discrimination and ultimately decided to seek repartriation to Israel where he could live freely as a Jew. Shortly after filing an application. his father was dismissed from his professional position.
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