The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry announced today plans for a rally in Manhattan’s Garment Center in commemoration of the 17th anniversary on the murder of 24 Russian Jewish intellectuals by Stalin and for release of Soviet dissidents. The rally will be held at noon Tuesday, the organization said.
Officials said the demonstration will issue a call for formation of an International Release Committee for colleagues of the recently defecting Soviet writer Anatoly Kuznetsov, including Yuli Daniel and Andre Sinyavsky, who are serving terms in Soviet labor camps, and for Jewish resisters such as Boris Kochubiyevsky and Ilya Ripps. Kochubievsky is a Kiev engineer who was sentenced in May to a Soviet prison camp for protesting against the treatment of Jews in Russia and for seeking to emigrate to Israel. Ripps is a young Jewish student who tried self-immolation in April to protest the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia and whose fate since his arrest is unknown.
The officials said that a line of students would stand linked by heavy chains to represent the incarceration of Soviet dissidents and that a cantor will chant El Molay Rachamim, the prayer for the dead, on behalf of the Soviet martyrs and dissidents.
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