On the 12th of May in Kiev, the Chairman of the General Council of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) Josef Zisels has spoken at the opening of the exhibition "Jews of the Struggle," organized by the Ministry of Public Affairs and the Diaspora of the State of Israel. The "living exhibit," as Zina Kalai-Klaitman, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the State of Israel, aptly called him, greeted the gathering, and also gave a short talk on his participation in the movement for the right to free emigration.
The EAJC General Council Chairman Josef Zisels also expressed his regret that the exhibition does not feature the Jews who actively participated in this movement during the 1970s-1980s, and were repressed by the Soviet regime. He gave such names as Vladimir Kislik, Alexander Feldman, Yakov Levin, Rosa Palatnik, and the Nepmonyashie family.
According to the organizators, "the struggle which the exhibition is dedicated to was one of the most important processes in the history of the Jewish people in the 20th century: the Jews of the USSR from 1967 to 1989 were caught in the vices of a totalitarian state, which was denying them not only the right to live like a Jew, but also the right to emigrate, and held a vicious campaign against them, having named them traitors to their homeland. At the same time, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, the Jewish people and the entire global community stepped up to aid the stuggling Jews, and this was a campaign of unprecedented scale."