Hillel To Protest For Soviet Jews

Student protests against human rights violations will take a different turn at Harvard next week when the Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel sponsors a two-day letter-writing blitz in support of Soviet Jews.

In the past, the Hillel has written letters on behalf of Jews, known as refuseniks, who have had requests for emigration denied by the Soviet government.

The protest will try to "create a stir within the Soviet Union by inundating their government with letters and to awaken student concern to the plight of refuseniks as a human rights issue, not a Jewish one," said Melissa B. Milgram '88, co-chairman of the Hillel committee sponsoring the write-a-thon.

Rally organizers say the event has received endorsements from the Jewish Law Students Association, the Catholic Students Association, and the president of the Democratic Club.

"The situation is a lot worse than in previous years," Milgram said. "Far fewer [Jews] got out last year than in any other."

Each month Hillel holds a letter writing meeting to petition the Soviets on behalf of one refusenik family, the Kahassins. But this rally will be unique because it will place the issue before the entire campus, said staff supervisor Karen Boitman '84.

Letter writing campaigns are "really important because the more [Soviet officials] think people in the U.S. are concerned, the more sensitive they will be to the issue," said Boitman. All letters are sent to middle-level Soviet bureaucrats, Milgram said, because they will be more influenced by them.

A rally will begin at 2 p.m. on the steps of Memorial Church with a performance by a traditional Jewish folk group which recently left the Soviet Union. Various readings will follow until 5 p.m. when the proceedings will move to Hillel's Riesman Center on Mt. Auburn St.

Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz and Professor of English Helen Vendler are both scheduled to make presentations.

Organizers of the rally expect 300 people--double the number of people at last year's Soviet Jewry rally--over the twenty-four hour period.