MURRAY RICHTEL. Born 1940.

TRANSCRIPT of OH 1659V

This interview was recorded on May 6, 2010, for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer is Shirley S. Steele. The interview also is available in video format, filmed by Anne Marie Pois. The interview was transcribed by Shirley Steele.

ABSTRACT: In this interview Judge Murray Richtel recalls leading a group of lawyers and judges on a trip to the USSR in 1986. He remembers the subtext of that trip being for him to contact Soviet Jews and learn first hand about the dimensions of the situation. He describes some of the people he met, both Jews and Soviet officials, and his own growing feeling that something had to be done to help the and how this resulted in the founding, with several others, of Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry (BASJ). Parallel with this founding of BASJ was the community action specifically to help Naum Meiman, a distinguished mathematician and refusenik, to leave the . Judge Richtel also talks about the specific interactions of BASJ and the Boulder/Dushanbe Sister City Project.

NOTE: The interviewer’s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets.

[A].

00:00 (This interview is under the auspices of the Maria Rogers Oral History Program, Boulder Public Library. It is one of a number of interviews of people who were involved with the Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry. This is Judge Murray Richtel, one of the co-founders of the BASJ. are in his Boulder home. It is May 6th, 2010. I’m Shirley Steele. Anne Marie Pois is filming the interview.)

(Murray, we’ll start with you from your beginning. When and where were you born and where did you grow up?)

I was born in Denver on September 27, 1940, and I lived in Denver until I was eight, and then my family moved to Fresno, California. I went to school and law school in California. Then in ‘71 I came to teach at the law school, and the person who made the decision to hire me at the law school was Bill Cohen.

(Just to step back a little bit—we want to go after that, too—but do you remember, maybe from when you were in California, what your family—what your neighborhood looked like and your family affiliation with Judaism, or not?)

Sure. Well, I was an only child but I had several uncles on my dad’s side living in California. My dad’s family was—at my grandmother’s level—was Orthodox, but none of the siblings living in California were Orthodox at all. My mom’s family was extreme leftist and not religious at all, but you know, we went to the synagogue on the holidays. I had a Bar Mitzvah. There was an extreme Jewish consciousness but not a religious Jewish consciousness is what I would say.

(Would this have been reflected in your neighborhood or in your school?)

Oh no, I was all alone. There were very, very few people, Jewish people.

(Did you experience any problems in that?)

Plenty. Yeah. I remember fights when I was in elementary school because people would use derogatory names, and I remember in high school it was awful. I was the one Jewish kid in a big group of guys. I was well-liked by the guys, but they used—they would call me “Jew Boy” or “Sheeny” or “Kike,” and they thought it was funny, and I knew they were derogatory, and I sort of never complained about it, but it was , and it wasn’t nice, and I didn’t like it.

(How about college?)

Well, all of these are very long stories. I started at Berkeley in 1958, and Berkeley was—the big focus of social life at Berkeley were fraternities and sororities, and they were segregated in those days. Let’s say there were 45 fraternities on campus, 6 of them were all Jewish and 39 were all gentile, and never the twain shall meet. We were completely segregated. By and large, the Jewish fraternity guys dated the Jewish sorority girls, and there was no cross over, even once. I had a good friend from Fresno who was in one of the gentile sororities, and we used to go drink beer on Thursday nights until the sorority found out and stopped it. Just said, No, you can’t do that. We didn’t even question it, you know, that was the way it was.

(Is this in ‘58?)

Yeah, I was in Berkeley from ‘58 and graduated in the spring of ‘62.

(Prior to the days of activism though.)

Oh no, there was plenty of activism. In fact, I was in a Jewish fraternity, and we had CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] and the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] and all the human rights activists came to our fraternities—Fair Play for Cuba— all of that, but you know, the Jewish fraternities were way more active on the left than the other fraternities were.

05:09 (So you had some experiences in activism in college.)

Uh, yeah—exposure to it and then the anti-war movement and things like that.

(Do you remember what kinds of activities that would involve?)

Well, I don’t remember precise activities at Berkeley, but I do remember Fair Play for Cuba. I do remember that I had a history professor who taught that FDR started World War II, and he was very popular, and he made us think we had a—when Caryl Chessman was executed at San Quentin, we had a moment of silence in the history classroom, and we also were required to go to San Quentin and see the—I don’t remember if it was the gas chamber or electric chair but we went to see it.

Then I was very active against the war in Vietnam, and my law practice in Los Angeles where I was a young lawyer was all anti-war activity. I had literally hundreds of war resistors as clients. We did—my law partner and I did a lot of volunteer work for people that couldn’t afford to actually go to lawyers. We taught a lot of people how to resist the draft and how to help other people that wanted to get out of the military. So then I decided I wanted to teach, because I loved teaching, and I loved that age group. So that’s kind of how I ended up in Boulder.

(But you went to the university, you weren’t in private practice then.)

Right. I went directly to the Law School and Bill—[see William Cohen interview: OH1648V A- C] Bill was the Director of the Legal Aid and Defender Program, and he hired me, so he ran the criminal side, where students represented university students who were in trouble criminally, and I supervised the students that represented university students in civil cases. By the way, when I was appointed to the bench, Roxanne Bailin [see OH 1651V A-B] replaced me. So there was a direct line there.

(When you were at the university at the law school, there was activism then in Boulder, right?)

Yes. In fact when—in the spring of 1972, when the Americans bombed the Haiphong harbor, there was a huge, huge demonstration on campus, and I tried from the Legal Aid civil side, tried to negotiate with the sheriff’s office and law enforcement because the students had taken over a bridge—the bridge that crosses Baseline—they’d taken that over and the sheriff’s office was going to disperse them, and I tried to negotiate for the students to be allowed to peaceably evacuate that. We didn’t get anywhere, and they brought helicopters in with tear gas, and lots of people were arrested including me. But I was quickly released from jail by a lower court judge who later became my colleague on the district court bench.

(On what grounds did they have arrested you? If there were any?)

[chuckles] There were people—there was another law professor who was on the bus, Skip Chase, who was a good friend of Ogla Plam’s, Skip was on the bus—he’d been previously arrested. I got into an argument with the police, because I tried to get Skip off the bus, and I ended up on the bus myself.

(That would give you a piece of experience.)

Yes.

10:03 (So, how long did you stay at the university?)

From ‘71 to’77, and then I was appointed to the bench.

(And that would put an entirely different slant on activism.) Well, I’m not so sure—about activism—yes. For example, I never saw myself—I don’t agree with the notion—that’s a long discussion—but I don’t agree with the notion of judicial activism, but I believe that a judge should strictly follow the law. But the reason for that reflects my, if you will, activism bias because if you strictly follow the law, then the little guy and the minority get protected. So that’s how my judicial attitude was framed.

(The—going into a parallel life of what was going on as far as the Soviet Jews were concerned or what was going on in the USSR, because you told me that you had gone there—)

Well, I was trying to think about this. I knew that there were problems with Soviet Jewry just from the newspaper. I had a relative that I was very close to in Israel who had a friend—he’d emigrated from the former Soviet Union in the ‘30s to Israel, but he had a close friend who still lived in the Soviet Union. He asked me to send him packages, and I remember I sent him a very nice, warm parka from here, and it came back. It was never opened. That was upsetting to me and to my relative in Israel. So I remember that I was aware of it on some level.

And then I knew Olga [Plam: see interview OH 1647V A-B], and I liked Olga very much. I knew her through this other law professor, Skip Chase. I don’t know quite how, but somebody offered me a position leading a group of lawyers and judges to the Soviet Union in 1986.

(This would have been affiliated with something local or—?)

No, some national group. It wasn’t a Jewish group.

(Okay.)

You know, one of these—kind of a travel boondoggle. You know, I think I got my fare paid for if I would lead this group of judges and lawyers. Then I kind of felt guilty about it, because I thought, I don’t want to take these people to the Soviet Union when all these bad things are going on that I didn’t quite know about completely, and so I decided that I wanted to do something about that.

Now my mom had a friend named Lily Halpern who was very, very active in Denver’s Soviet Jewry [group]. I don’t remember—I think there were two organizations at the time, and it was all extremely secretive. So I contacted these organizations, and I told them where I was from and I was also quite aware of the problems with Olga’s father. [Naum Meiman]

(To just sort of step back and sort of summarize the beginnings of those problems for people who are listening to this tape—)

Well, I don’t remember—I just remember that the Jews in the Soviet Union couldn’t get out, and they wanted to go to Israel, and I thought that was awful. I knew that they didn’t have things that they needed. I think what I knew was that when they applied to leave the Soviet Union, then they lost their jobs and lost their privileges, and they lost everything. I don’t remember the details of it, but I just know that as soon as you applied to leave, your life was turned upside down, and there were Jewish organizations here that were trying to help those people in the Soviet Union. It was like hopeless that they were going to get out, but to give them—or maybe they were going to get out after a long period of time—but they needed things. They needed medication, they needed food.

I know that—well this is jumping way forward—but as I said, it was all kind of secret and—but I know that I took things in my suitcase that I knew were going to be given to people that were in prison. Canned foods. I took loads and loads of tuna, I took drugs—not, you know what I mean, over the counter drugs—I took insulin, I think I took insulin.

I had names and addresses of people to meet that were all—I knew—it was weird, now that I look back on it I laugh about it. I mean, they had me make up my own code so these names couldn’t be recognized in my diary and things like that.

15:53 (_____?)

These two Jewish organizations in Denver, I don’t even remember the names of them. I remember that the first night I landed in —I was with my dad—I took my dad for his seventieth birthday, which is weird since I am about to have my seventieth birthday—but we went to this huge hotel in Moscow. We were tired and jet-lagged, and it was, literally, one or two in the morning.

My instructions were to call this person in Moscow. I want to say Lev Shapiro, I don’t know why that name comes to my mind, but, you know, Call him as soon as you land so he has as much time as possible to arrange to see you and get whatever he needs from you. So, I remember it was raining, and it was cold, and I said, “Dad I’m going to go call this guy but I got to call him at a phone booth.”

He goes, “You’re not going without me.”

[chuckling] So the two of us went outside, like two in the morning, to a phone booth near our hotel and called this guy, and then he said, Come now. So we took the subway in Moscow in the middle of the night to this gigantic apartment house somewhere, you know, in Moscow and met this guy and set up whatever we were going to do.

(I have to stop you and ask you about the language.)

English, there was no trouble. That was in English, all in English.

(Both sides.)

Yes.

(OK. You’re in the apartment. They have a big apartment house.)

Well, honestly, I don’t remember what we did—for example, I remember it might not have been in Moscow. I have a feeling that it was in Armenia, in Azerbaijan, that this man needed shoes for his little boy, and we drew the little boy’s foot on a piece of paper, which we took back to the United States. I also remember there that he didn’t want us to come to—it was very clandestine and weird—he didn’t want us to come to his hotel—I mean he didn’t want to come to our hotel—and he didn’t want us to come directly to his house, so we had to stand on this square— this again is with my dad—stand on this square in Yerevan and watch for a guy who was going to walk by us, and he was going to walk by us two times and then we were going to follow him. I mean, it was crazy. Completely crazy.

19:11 (Were the other members of the group knowledgeable?)

No, they had no clue, absolutely no clue. I remember, I was so upset because, you know, it was madness. We would—I would ask—during the day we would meet with all these Soviet officials and Soviet judges and I would say, “Well, what about [Natan] Sharansky’s trial?” Because, it had just happened. I don’t remember the details, but I know that I heard one thing from the Soviet officials and completely the opposite from all of the Refuseniks we met with.

I also remember that in Moscow, whoever this guy was—I was always interested in the Rosenbergs [Ethel and Julius Rosenberg], and I remember I asked him a question about the Rosenbergs, and he like make a hand signal to me that he didn’t want to talk about them. I got that, and then we left his apartment, and I remember the subway station was Gorky Park, that’s what it was, I remember because there was a book about Gorky Park. And after we got out of his apartment and were somewhere in the middle of the street, then he said to me, “Now I can talk about the Rosenbergs, I didn’t want to talk about the Rosenbergs in my apartment.” Now I remember, this guy was a mathematician, and he said to me, “In Soviet scientific circles, we always thought that the Rosenbergs did significant and good work for us.” So God knows. I have no clue.

(That trip lasted how long?)

I think two weeks, seventeen days, something like—

(I got the impression that you went away from Moscow into other places.)

Well, we went—in every place, we saw Jews—we went to Moscow, we went to Tbilisi, which was in Georgia. We went to Yerevan, Armenia. We went to—then it was Leningrad, and we went to Baku in Azerbaijan. So we went all over. I also remember we—I think we were in Leningrad on the High Holidays—or if not, my dad and I went to the synagogue and he spoke Yiddish, and he had a conversation with somebody in the synagogue who spoke Yiddish. I don’t remember the details of it, but I remember that happened.

(But at that time there was public worship?)

I don’t have a clear memory. I’m picturing a very large room that seemed to me relatively empty. That’s how I picture it.

Anyway, that’s what we did.

(So you came back.)

Yes, and I came back and honestly, it was very emotional for me, particularly in Leningrad, I remember that because this man’s apartment—they gave my dad and I a meal. I don’t know whether it was a Friday night or not, but—now this is going to sound funny—the place smelled Jewish. What I mean by that, it smelled like my grandma’s house on a Friday night. These were such nice people, and we had so much in common in a way, and it was crazy that they didn’t have their freedom.

It’s emotional for me now because I remember I was so angry, you know, I was so angry that they—that they were, they were prisoners. It made me furious. The next day we went to this great big fancy hall in St. Petersburg, and all these stuffy Russian officials were there. I was furious. It was hard for me to keep control of myself, because I was so—it was just so awful what I saw. To me, on a human level, that these people couldn’t—they couldn’t do anything. They didn’t have jobs, and they were just stuck in their apartments. So that’s kind of what I brought back with me.

(Did you talk about it here?)

I don’t know. I guess I talked to Bill about it.

25:02 (Excuse me, I’ve kind of lost track of the chronology. This would have been in the seventies?)

This is ‘86. As soon as I came back. I don’t know how I connected with Bill about it. We were friends, and I think that we talked to him, [pause] and I think that Boulder had a Sister City relationship with Dushanbe. I guess Bill and I thought, Maybe we can do something with the Dushanbe Jews. It seems to me that what was happening is the Boulder Sister Cities was sending a group to Dushanbe, and I don’t know how we had a name from somebody in Dushanbe— anyway, my recollection is we decided we had to put one of our people—we had to put somebody in the trip to Dushanbe. I think that we thought we needed somebody that was establishment.

And I think, by that time, Roxanne was already a judge. I think she just started. Roxanne and I always had a close relationship. Well, as I said, I hired her at CU. Then she was a lawyer that appeared before me regularly, and when she applied to be on the bench, I wrote her a recommendation letter. So, however it was, we got Roxanne and Rebecca Bradley to go on that trip to Dushanbe. I remember Roxanne saying how emotional it was. She was walking on the street in Dushanbe as I recall her telling me. What’s the lady’s name, it’s not Olga?

(Alla.)

Alla, yeah—and she—some little kid ran up or somehow she ended up in her house, and they ended up here.

(And they didn’t know, Roxanne didn’t know to look for her?)

I think she knew to look for her, but I don’t think she knew how they were going to connect or what it was going to be, and I think—I forgot—she was asking—what was the lady’s name again?

(Alla Levy or Gurz—)

Gurzhiev. Alla Gurzhev. Yeah. So she met—I think she met Alla’s sister, whose name now escapes me, on the street and then they ended up in their house. That’s what I remember.

(Very strange.)

Yes.

(And what were Roxanne and Rebecca charged with?)

Well, I think just connecting with that Jewish community to see whether we could help them. Then I don’t remember how it happened—Oh, I know—so they came back, and they were outraged, it seems to me. So then we decided to get all of the Boulder public officials that we could, lined up to make demands on our Sister City [Dushanbe] that they should let the Jews go from Dushanbe. So I think, that we got—you’ll have to look at the tape [which Judge Richtel has donated to the Maria Rogers Oral History Program and now has been archived as a DVD, OH _____]—but I think we got all the Boulder City Council people, we got all the judges, we got the County Commissioners, I don’t think there was a public official in Boulder that we didn’t have.

Oh, no, I take it back, that was to get Olga Plam’s dad out. [Naum Meiman] That’s what we put that all together on. That was the rally for Olga’s dad, and so that was one thing we did.

30:17 Then the other thing we did was to work on getting these Jews out of Dushanbe. So the mayor of Dushanbe was coming to Boulder. And Bill and I insisted that we see the mayor of Dushanbe. The Boulder Sister Cities people didn’t want us to do that. They didn’t want whatever their gig was in the Sister City program—they didn’t want it to be politicized. But we insisted. I don’t remember, I don’t remember exactly how we did it, but we had it down to a science. We knew what Bill was going to say, and what I was going to say, and what we were going to say if they said X, and what we were going to say if they said Y. It was planned out and somehow we boxed this guy in. I don’t remember the details but we got what we wanted.

(Which was?)

Well, I don’t know if the Soviet Union—when they decided to let the Jews out, but all I know is that this mayor of Dushanbe made a commitment to write letters and do whatever he could to make sure that the Jews in Dushanbe got out. I don’t remember what it was. but I remember we were pit bulls—we just didn’t give up somehow, and then, all of a sudden, people were coming. That’s what I remember.

(And along with this, during this period of time, the Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry got a formal, got to be formally—)

I think Bill did all of that legal stuff. I don’t remember that. What I remember is—I remember this beginning stuff and this strong feeling that something had to be done—that it was just awful what was going on there from the people that I saw. I remember—the two things that I remember is that rally that was for Olga’s dad—

Oh, I remember that other thing, just on a personal level. Olga was so angry with me, because all—it seems like all the Colorado efforts were focused on Olga’s dad, and when I contacted these Denver Jewish organizations they said, There has to be focus on somebody other than Olga’s dad, and we need you to do these other things. Well, I understood that but I felt a little out of faith with Olga. On the other hand, what did I know? They were the experts, so I did that. Then when I came back, I told Olga and she was upset with me, and you know, I don’t blame her, but I did eventually meet Olga’s dad in Israel.

(So he did get out?)

Yes, he got out, and I met him in Israel.

(Was he working in Israel then?)

I think he was working. Yes, he was working because I went to a university office where he was.

(Got into a university there?)

I think so. I think he did

(I’m coming back to Boulder again. I can see that the BASJ was into advocacy at that point, but I know also that eventually it became resettlement, oriented toward resettlement, and I’m wondering if you know how that—

You know, I really don’t. I did some of that stuff, but then Bill just—he kind of really ran with it. For example, I remember we took everybody to a baseball game, and I arranged to have free tickets for the Denver Bears so all these little Russian Jewish kids could go on the field and all of that. But I don’t remember so much the transition.

There was some benefactor that had a lot of money that Bill knew from the synagogue that was—you know, got us TVs and all kinds of stuff like that. Wow, that just reminded—we had— I’m just remembering we actually had phone calls with Dushanbe about when people were coming, because I’m picturing being in an office and having this phone call go through to Dushanbe with this benefactor that we had who was going to—we needed to know how many people were coming, and what they were bringing, and what they would need, and all of that stuff.

36:25 (So somebody here would have to rent apartments.)

Yeah, but that’s—Roxanne and Bill really did much more of that than I did. See I was—I couldn’t be a fund raiser, because I was a judge, so I couldn’t do any of that. The other thing is— I mean I really, I was walking a thin line by my advocacy anyway as a judge. So after the beginning, it was more Roxanne and Bill than it was me.

(Besides the social events, do you recall being involved with any of the religious events with the New Americans?)

No, I wasn’t too much into the religious part of it.

(I was just thinking of the gatherings, and that was the only one that came to—)

The gatherings that I remember—I remember vividly the first—not vividly—I can picture the room when Alla came and what it was like and how amazing that was to actually believe that we got a person out. And she came to Roxanne’s house. That was staggering, we were so excited. Couldn’t believe it.

(And, of course, she was followed by other people.)

Oh yeah, and I don’t even know—dozens and dozens—well, I don’t know if it was dozens and dozens after that.

(Must have been. Do you know anything about the affiliation of the Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry—I’m trying to get back to there—affiliation with any of the other groups in Denver?)

I don’t remember. I know there were two groups and one was more radical than the other—or more feisty for want of a better word—than the other. I don’t remember the details of that. My recollection is we did our own thing, but then, because of the limitation on my activity, and Bill just going nuts with it, in a positive way, that he got real active in the national organization stuff.

(So the Soviet Jews were coming into the United States all over the United States?)

I guess, I mean that’s what I think. I can’t remember whether it was glasnost, perestroika, I don’t remember what all those words were even any more, but that’s what I think happened.

(Did you have any personal relationships with people who came over here to be resettled?)

I didn’t really, Bill and Roxanne did. I didn’t have so much of that. I don’t know, I guess they all know me and associate me with it to some extent, but I was kind of more there at the beginning and then these other people took over after me.

40:01 (Just from the point of view of now, looking back then, how would you judge the effectiveness of it?)

I think what we did with Dushanbe was incredible. I mean what we did to get the mayor to do that. I have a distinct feeling that we really achieved something there, that we got people to pay attention. And I also think that this whole business with Olga’s dad—that big rally—helped. Look, look at all the people that are here that are successful now.

(That was my next question about what was the effect of this as far as the community was concerned?)

Well, you know again, I can’t give you—

(From your point of view.)

Well, I think the best thing is that we didn’t need it anymore. They were all here, and they were all successful and they didn’t need our help any more. It’s like you started a social welfare program and everybody got well. That was the end of it.

(How do account for that?)

I don’t know. I don’t know the people that well on an individual basis, but they must have been very driven, committed people to stick with it and want to get out of there and come to a new country. Imagine, as bad as it was, the courage it took for them to come to a completely new place. And look, they’ve done well. The Soviet immigrants have done well in Israel as well.

(Do you ever—I’m sure you do—superficially, but do you have any contacts when you are in Israel with them?)

No, there is one law professor that I knew, but just as a colleague, not on that basis, but I do tell Misha Plam [husband of Olga Plam] all the time, in Israel there are so many men that you see on the street that have got this head style of mine and so does Olga’s husband. It’s funny, these Russian Jewish men that have immigrated there.

(There’s a question that I wanted to ask that goes way back into what you were talking about. What did your dad think of this whole trip?)

He loved it. We loved it both because of the relationship between the two of us. That was a really special thing to do. He loved speaking Yiddish to the people in Leningrad, and also I remember we went to the synagogue in Yerevan [Armenia], and he really got a kick out of that, because there were kosher butcher shops in—were there kosher?—yeah, I have a sense that there was this religious neighborhood—not religious, but like a little ghetto in Yerevan, and he identified with that from his growing up.

(Did he have any affective feelings that you had, the anger?)

No, I don’t think so, but I don’t think he—I’m just not sure. I don’t remember that we talked about that.

(Are there any other things you’d like to talk about?)

No, I think I’ve given you what I remember. I haven’t thought about it in a long time, but I think we did do a pretty good job in retrospect, and I do think we really felt like we made that Sister City program work to our advantage.

(Yes. I believe so. Did they think that?)

I have no clue, but every time I walk by the Teahouse, I laugh and say, “Hey you got your Teahouse, but we got the best of you [got people out].”

(Do you have anything? I think that you have given us a very fine interview.)

Good.

(And thank you very much for it.)

I enjoyed it.

(We’ll close it, unless you have something else.)

No. Thank you very much.

(Thank you.)

45:36 [End of interview.]