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Prisoners of Zion. 1968.




Baruch Ashi (Kochubievsky)

Born in 1936, he was brought up in an orphanage, because his parents perished in Baby Yar. He became a prominent Zionist activist, well known among Jewish youth. In 1968 he made a speech at the meeting in Baby Yar, and the same year was arrested in Kiev on charges of Zionist anti-government sabotage, specifically with distributing information about the state of Israel, the Israeli Army, historical data about the Jewish people and its national-liberation movement – Zionism. Sentenced to 3 years imprisonment in the Gulag, he spent his sentence in Siberian camps. He was the first Soviet Jew sentenced for Zioinist activity after the Six Days War. He continued his Zionist activity even in the camps. Released in 1971, he left the USSR for Israel in the same year.





David Betsalel (Beidzal)

Born in 1900 in Odessa, he became an active Zionist from his youth. In 1948 he began active propaganda for free Jewish emigration. He organized groups of Jews willing to leave for Israel, and gave their names to the authorities, asking for permission for them to be allowed to travel to their historic homeland. In 1966 he established connections with the Israeli Embassy in Moscow in the cause of overall free immigration of Jews from the Soviet Union into Israel. In 1968 he was arrested and charged with contacts with American representatives of the Joint which in 20th and 30th was engaged in organization and establishment of Jewish agricultural communes in the South Ukraine and Crimea, and also with systematic Zionist activities, and was sentenced to 6 years in the Gulag. In 1970 he was released and the same year he left for Israel. David Betsalel received the title of "Honorary Citizen" of the town Tveria. He published several books on the national Jewish problems.



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