Hillel Phone-In

The Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel will sponsor a public phone call Sunday to six refuseniks in the Soviet Union who will begin a hunger strike next week to coincide with the Madrid Human Rights Conference.

The strike is aimed at protesting the Soviets non-compliance with human rights guarantees assured at the 1975 Helsinki accords.

The Kishinev refuseniks who have been applying to rejoin immediate family members in Israel for the past three to six years, have been denied exit visas on the grounds that they possess state military secrets. David Vodovoz, one of the six refuseniks, worked as a construction painter during his military service and denies possessing any such secrets.

"It's almost certain that the Soviet authorities will tap the phone," Kate Sugarman '83, head of the Soviet Jewry Committee at the Hillel said last week, adding, "we really have to be careful about saying anything controversial that would further jeopardize the safety of the refuseniks-we really just want to give them a moral boost."

Morris Kranc, a Cambridge resident who returned from the Soviet Union a week ago after a 10-day visit with refuseniks in Moscow, Kiev and Kishinev, reported that Vladimir Tsukerman, one of the six, had been arrested and sentenced to imprisonment until after the Madrid Conference, because he refused to obey the KGB's orders that he call off his hunger strike.

"The arrest hasn't seemed to shake up the other refuseniks very much. In fact they've been very calm," Kranc said this week adding, "they're really an incredible people who just have very simple wishes and ambitions, it's the terrible circumstances that makes them so heroic."

Gary Finder, an associate at the American Zionist Youth Foundation in Boston, organized the public call with-Judith Cohen, program director at the Hillel. The call will be placed on Sunday at 9:00 a.m. at the Hillel Riesman Center in Cambridge.

"It's difficult to know quite just what to say. What can you say? 'Good luck? or 'See you in Israel'? It's like taunting them," Kranc said.