Hillel Committee Holds Rally For Imprisoned Soviet Dissident

"Bridges of academic freedom cannot be built on the corpses of people like Anatoly Shcharansky," Alan M. Dershowitz, professor of law said at a rally for Soviet hunger striker Shcharansky last night at Holyoke Center.

Dershowitz, calling the plight of Shcharansky "a situation of absolute desperation", stressed the importance of American response critical of civil rights violations in the Soviet Union and around the world. The three speakers who followed reiterated that that theme.

The rally, sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel's Committee on Oppressed lewry, began with a prayer led by Hillel's Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold and continued with speeches by Dershowitz, a member of the Legal Council on Soviet Jewry, an Amnesty International representative, and a professor Enterson College who visited the Shcharansky family five years ago in the Soviet Union.

James M. Coben '83, one of the organizers of the rally, led songs in Hebrew and English to a crowd bearing candles, signs and llyers.

"It's an issue for everyone," said a Boston University student, "but as Jews we must take initiative." Students from BU and Brandeis were present as well as members of the Harvard and Cambridge community.

Shcharansky, a computer scientist, was arrested in 1977 for treason, espionage, and anti-Soviet agitation while a member of a group monitoring Soviet violations of the Helsinki Final Act an agreement giving citizens the right to emigrate and join their lamellas abroad.

The 34-year-old Shcharansky, currently in the fifth year of a 13 year sentence, began a hunger strike this fall to protest Soviet treatment of dissidents.