Soviet Jewry Memories Bert Silver 2009

My name is Bert Silver. I was born on June 30, 1931, in Scranton, , a community of 140,000 people of whom about 5,000 were . I lived in Scranton until I left to attend Penn State University in 1949. After college I was drafted into the army and for all intents and purposes never returned to Scranton to live.

After the army I went to the University of Minnesota to get a master’s degree. I then worked for the State of New York in Albany. After getting married Nancy and I lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where I worked for the state. We moved to Washington in June 1961, when I was offered a job with the Department of Labor of the Federal government. We first lived in an apartment in Adelphi, Maryland. In 1962 we bought a house in Wheaton, Maryland, and in 1973, we moved to our present home in Potomac, Maryland. We joined B’nai Congregation when our first son was old enough to attend Hebrew School and have been members since. At the time we joined the synagogue was still located on 16th and Crittenden Streets but had a Hebrew school building on Georgia Avenue in Wheaton. B'nai Israel is of course now located in Rockville, Maryland.

I don’t remember exactly when I became involved in the Soviet Jewry movement but it was probably in 1969. I first got involved with the Washington Committee for Soviet Jewry (WCSJ), but I am not sure exactly how. I think I attended some of their activities and met Moshe Brodetsky, the chairman, and Haim Solomon, the treasurer. Moshe did not have a car and Haim drove him to meetings and events. At one such meeting I paid five dollars and joined the WCSJ.

At the time I was the social action chairman of B’nai Israel and the Soviet Jewry movement was one of the projects in which I got the committee and the synagogue involved. Later on, when I became active in the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington (JCC), I served on its Soviet Jewry Committee. Still later I served as social action chairman of the Seaboard Region of the United Synagogue of America and got the congregations in the region, which I believed

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 1 Voices of the Vigil stretched from Maryland south through North Carolina, involved with Soviet Jewry among other issues.

The WCSJ was the activist, non-establishment group that first advocated for Soviet Jewry in the Washington area. It was the Washington affiliate of a loosely organized non-establishment nation-wide alignment of councils called the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. Later when the JCC established its own Soviet Jewry Committee to work on the issue, many of the activists of the WCSJ including myself also served on the JCC committee. While both organizations worked actively on behalf of the Soviet Jews, the WCSJ continued in its gadfly role, often taking actions and responding to events in the before the JCC could act since the later organization had to check its positions and often could act only after it had consulted with national Jewish organizations.

Lube Bershadskaja Meeting In 1971, one of the first refuseniks who got out of the USSR came to the Washington area I believe under the auspices of the WCSJ. Her name was Lube Bershadskaja and I arranged for a public meeting in the Eig Auditorium of B’nai Israel where she spoke on the evening of March 7, 1971. I believe we had over one hundred people in attendance. Later on Moshe told me that Harold Light, the chairman of the Bay Area Council (San Francisco) on Soviet Jews was going to be in town. I arranged to host a program where he spoke at the B’nai Irael Hebrew School, where we had a good turnout. Hal spoke on “One Night in Kiev” concerning his encounter with Soviet Jews during his trip to the Soviet Union.

Contacting Soviet Synagogues and Refuseniks In the early 1970s we had few addresses for Soviet Jews but we did have addresses for synagogues located in various Soviet cities. A national campaign was launched to send New Years cards to the synagogues. I believe it was in 1972, that the B’nai Israel Mens’ Club decided to send a Hannukah menorah to the Leningrad Synagogue. Al Kaizen, president of the Club, and I purchased the menorah, a large almost institutional-sized one, from one of the Jewish bookstores and took it apart to prepare it for shipment to Leningrad. Mort Yadin, who was a member of B'nai Israel and spoke Russian, wrote a letter to the Leningrad synagogue members,

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 2 Voices of the Vigil which we placed in the package. The next day I took it to the Benjamin Franklin branch of the Post Office in downtown Washington to send it by registered mail to Leningrad. At the window I was informed that the package was too large to meet Post Office regulations for overseas mail. When I asked what recourse I had, I was told that if I could get one of the lawyers in the legal department upstairs to grant a waiver the Post Office would accept the package. I went to the legal office and spoke to one of the lawyers, who happened to be Jewish. When he heard where the package was going and why it was going there he immediately granted a waiver and the menorah was off to Leningrad.

Later on we began to get the names and addresses of Soviet Jews who were refuseniks and the WCSJ instigated a campaign to send Jewish New Year cards to refuseniks. Avy Ashery, a designer, prepared appropriate Jewish New Years cards and the cards along with names and addresses of refuseniks were sold to members of the Jewish community. I remember sending New Years cards to refuseniks for years.

Also in 1972 or 1973, we learned that if registered letters or cards were sent and a return receipt was requested and if the signed receipt indicating delivery was not received within four weeks, International Postal Union regulations required the Soviets to send $15 for each claim filed. We began a campaign in B’nai Israel, which we called the RRRAM Campaign (Return Receipt Requested Registered Air Mail). We distributed a list of 17 refuseniks’ names and addresses along with an instruction sheet and collected a fair number of claims.

Mort Yadin made many telephone calls to refuseniks on behalf of the WCSJ. He also made a practice of calling the wardens in a number of Soviet prisons housing Prisoners of Conscience to berate them for their treatment of Soviet Jews. Often after a Sunday morning Men’s Club meeting, Mort would make calls to the Soviet Union from and on behalf of B’nai Israel. Mort’s exploits were written up in The Washington Post.

The Daily Vigil If there was one thing that differentiated the Washington Soviet Jewry movement from the movement in other cities it was the Daily Vigil across the street from the Soviet Embassy. The

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 3 Voices of the Vigil Soviet Embassy at that time was located on 16th Street between L and M Streets. Demonstrations there were prohibited by a local ordinance called “The 500 Foot Rule” that stipulated there could not be a demonstration within 500 feet of a foreign embassy. In 1970, David Amdur, a staff member of the JCC, told a few others that on Human Rights Day he intended to stand across the street from the Soviet Embassy and just stare at it for 15 minutes. In that manner the Daily Vigil was born. After I heard about the first vigil I made it a point to attend the second day, as did a large number of other persons. For over 20 years the Vigil was held every day in front of the Electrical Workers Union Building across from the Soviet Embassy from 12:30 to 12:45.

The Vigil became the center point of Soviet Jewry activity in Washington. Out-of-town visitors made it a point to come to the Vigil, as did political figures and celebrities. Pastor John Steinbruck of the Luther Place Memorial Church came to the Vigil often and brought his parishioners on Jewish holidays. Friends would call me and we would make appointments to meet at the Vigil and have lunch afterwards. The JCC scheduled synagogues and Jewish organizations to attend the Vigil on assigned days of the month. The Vigil continued for over 20 years until the Soviet Union collapsed and Jews were allowed to emigrate.

The Electrical Workers Union welcomed us to use the front of their building for the vigil and in appreciation, after many years of ongoing vigils, Buddy Sislen (the Director of International Affairs at the JCC, whose portfolio included Soviet Jewry) and I presented the executives of the Union with an antique oil lamp from Israel in appreciation of their support of our efforts.

Later, after Nat Lewin won a case in which the 500-Foot Rule was declared unconstitutional, the JCC prepared leaflets, which were handed out in front of the Soviet Embassy during the vigil. The leaflets often were specific dealing with the harassment of selected refuseniks or prisoners of conscience. Often the leafleter was Elmer Cerin, who was the sparkplug and the shamus of the Vigil. Elmer was there almost every day.

Once the law was no longer operative, the JCC also began hosting events across the street from the embassy such as a fast for Natan Sharansky, annual Tisha B’Av services, etc.

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Visit to Soviet Commercial Office In the Spring of 1972, we learned of the Soviet harassment of Eva Butman, the wife of Hillel Butman, B’nai Israel’s adopted Prisoner of Conscience. Karen Kravette, an employee of the WCSJ, suggested that during Passover services on April 1, 1972, the congregation march up to the Soviet Commercial Office located just off 16th Street, a block or two from B’nai Israel, to protest their treatment of Eva Butman. Mort Yadin and I talked to Rabbi Henry Segal about the plan and he readily agreed.

Rabbi Segal announced to the congregation that after the Torah reading, instead of replacing the Torahs in the ark, the entire congregation would march with the Torahs up 16th Street to the Soviet office. It must have been quite a sight, the entire congregation, men wearing talitot and Rabbi Segal in his robes carrying the Torahs up the street. When we got there we were quite surprised when the man in charge invited us in to talk. I remember Rabbi Segal, Mort and myself sitting on the front porch of the office with the head of the office discussing the lack of rights of Soviet Jews to emigrate! Apparently he had not gotten the word from the embassy that he was not to talk to Soviet Jewry protestors.

Soviet Jewry Signs In the early 1970s, B’nai Israel placed a large sign, “Speak Out for the Rights of Soviet Jews” in front of its building on 16th Street. Soon the JCC sponsored a campaign to have every synagogue and Jewish institution with its own building place a sign in front of its building, usually reading “Save Soviet Jewry.” This campaign was a universal success with every synagogue and institution cooperating. You could spot synagogue buildings by the signs in front of them. Luther Place Memorial Church, and perhaps some other non-Jewish institutions, also displayed such signs.

Prisoner of Conscience Hillel Butman As the number of Prisoners of Conscience and the number of refuseniks grew and their stories and names became known in the West a number of campaigns to publicize their plight were launched. The WCSJ flooded the city with prisoner of conscience medallions and bracelets and

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 5 Voices of the Vigil urged Jews to purchase and wear them. Addresses of refuseniks were also distributed so that people could attempt to write to them.

The JCC launched a campaign to have each synagogue adopt a Prisoner of Conscience. Mort Yadin and I, representing B’nai Israel, attended the meeting at which congregations choose a POC. At Mort’s suggestion we choose Hillel Butman. Hillel was one of those jailed after the infamous Leningrad hijack trial in which, I believe 8 Jews were accused of planning to hijack an airplane and fly it to Finland or Sweden. All were convicted with one or two being sentenced to death and the rest to prison. The death sentences caused an uproar in the West and finally the Soviets “relented” and commuted the death sentences, but all of the accused were sentenced to long prison terms.

B’nai Israel dedicated an empty chair in the sanctuary to Hillel Butman. A sign with his name on it was placed on the chair with a tallit draped over it. The congregation vowed that the chair would be vacant until Hillel was released and allowed to emigrate to Israel.

Hillel’s wife, Eva, lived in Leningrad. Congregants were urged to send cards and letters to her. Mort telephoned Eva and managed to establish contact. After a few years while Hillel remained in prison, Eva was allowed to leave for Israel. When Eva visited Washington Mort welcomed her to his house where he hosted a meeting so Eva could meet the people working on behalf of freeing her husband.

At the time B’nai Israel had a Hebrew School building in Silver Spring. To further publicize Hillel Butman’s plight we had a street sign made stating “Hillel Butman Drive” and affixed it to a post in the school driveway. Rabbi Simon spoke at the dedication, as did a Montgomery County official.

In 1981, Hillel Butman was released from prison and allowed to join Eva in Israel. Soon after Hillel came to Washington to thank all of his supporters. At the time I was president of the JCC and I was honored to host a reception for Hillel at my home. The following Friday night Hillel

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 6 Voices of the Vigil spoke at the service in B’nai Israel attended by hundreds of people. Hillel had come home to sit in his dedicated chair.

Demonstrations Simchat Torah was the holiday most associated with the Soviet Jewry movement. On that day Jews would celebrate in the Soviet Union and it became the focus of their identifying with their Jewishness. The JCC began sponsoring annual Simchat Torah rallies for Soviet Jews on or near the National Mall in 1971. The rallies attracted thousands of people.

For each rally, the JCC would encourage synagogues to hire school busses to transport their members to the rally. B’nai Israel usually hired a number of busses that picked up people at the Hebrew School in Silver Spring and then proceeded down 16th Street where it picked up more people who lived near the synagogue building and then took them to the Mall. At one of the major rallies I recall that we had six busses of B’nai Israel people.

In 1987, over 200,000 people showed up on the Mall in response to a call from Natan Sharansky. The local Jewish community participated in the national rally. At that time I was serving on the board of the Montgomery County Branch of the NAACP. At the meeting the month before the demonstration I suggested that the executive committee of the branch pass a motion of support and send it to the JCC. Instead, Roscoe Nix, the branch president suggested that NAACP members join the demonstration. It was agreed and on the morning of the demonstration we met at the Federal Triangle Metro Station and joined the rally. The Montgomery County NAACP was well represented.

Contested Jewish Community Council Election In 1973, activism on behalf of Soviet Jewry became an issue in a contested election for the Executive Committee (Board) of the JCC. The JCC’s constitution provided that half of its 50 member Executive Committee be elected for a two-year term every year. As was usual, the Executive Committee elected a nominating committee in late 1972 to propose candidates. The nominating committee proposed that a number of new persons be nominated, among whom were several members of the board of the Washington Committee for Soviet Jewry.

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A group of “Concerned Members of the Executive and Delegate Assembly,” including five ex- presidents of the JCC, then submitted a counter petition to nominate 25 people, seven of whom were not on the nominating committee slate. One of the reasons cited for this action was that the nominating committee “…slate has excessive representation of one point of view. Seven members of the Board of the Washington Committee on Soviet Jewry would be placed on our Executive Committee…” The 25 persons nominated by the Concerned Members did not include seven members nominated by the nominating committee, three of whom, Haim Solomon, Mort Yadin, and myself, were members of the WCSJ board. This resulted in the first contested election in at least a decade.

The dominant issue in the election was the degree of activism that should be expended on the Soviet Jewry issue. The election held on January 28, 1973, drew several hundred delegates to Ohr Kodesh Congregation where it was held. Counting of ballots continued several hours after the meeting adjourned. When the results were tabulated it was determined that five of the seven contested candidates nominated by the nominating committee (including Haim Solomon and myself) were elected. As an aside it is interesting to note that two of those five, Nat Lewin and myself, subsequently were elected and served as president of the JCC.

Demonstrations at Cultural Events In the 1970s a number of Soviet ballet groups and orchestras toured the United States as part of the cultural exchange program with the USSR and most of those groups made a stop at the Kennedy Center. The JCC invariably used those occasions to picket the Kennedy Center and hand out leaflets on behalf of Soviet Jews. The pamphlets welcome the groups to Washington as part of the cultural exchange between the American and Russian peoples but would note that Jewish culture was being repressed in the Soviet Union. Two of those occasions when I participated in the picketing come to mind.

On May 27, 1975, when the Bolshoi Ballet appeared at the Kennedy Center we handed out leaflets calling the attendees attention to that fact that two members of the Kirov Ballet, Valery Panov and his wife Galina had been refused permission to emigrate and had been dismissed from

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 8 Voices of the Vigil the Kirov because of their petitions to leave for Israel. When the Osipov Balalaika Orchestra appeared the leaflet again welcomed the cultural exchange but pointed out that more than 40 Soviet Jews were languishing in Soviet prisons for no other crime than their desire to emigrate to Israel. It also pointed out that the Soviet government denied its Jewish citizens basic cultural rights granted to other religious and nationality groups and that Jewish school and theaters had been closed.

Civil Rights Digest Article In 1968, I began working as Director of the Office of Management at the United States Commission on Civil Rights. My associates at the USCCR were well aware of my participation in activities on behalf of Soviet Jews. In 1970, the Staff Director asked me to ghost write an article for Ms. Frankie Freeman, one of the Commissioners, about the struggle for Soviet Jewry. I did so couching the Soviet Jewry movement in Civil Rights terms understandable to the civil rights community in the U.S. The article was published in the Civil Rights Digest, the quarterly publication of the USCCR.

On Human Rights Day in 1971, Ms. Freeman was invited to be the speaker at a Conference Commemorating Human Rights for Soviet Jews in St. Louis, Missouri. Ms. Freeman gave the keynote address to the conference on December 6, 1971. Her speech was based largely on the Civil Rights Digest article I had written in her name.

Babi Yar Concert at Kennedy Center In 1981, when I was president of the JCC, a former Soviet Jew came to us and proposed that we sponsor a concert at which the Babi Yar Symphony would be performed at the Kennedy Center on behalf of Soviet Jewry. It seemed like a daunting task to get a symphony orchestra to play and to fill the Concert Hall of the Kennedy Center. After some discussion we decided to do it. The planning for the concert began in my presidency and the remainder of the planning and work continued during the presidency of Nat Lewin, who succeeded me. On September 22, 1982, the concert performed by the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra took place in a sold out Concert Hall. The primary speaker was Elie Weisel.

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 9 Voices of the Vigil , World Conference on Soviet Jewry On March 15-17, 1983, my wife and I were delegates to the Jerusalem World Conference on Soviet Jewry. This was the third such conference the first two having been held in Brussels, Belgium. Other delegates from Washington were Reverend John Steinbruck, Buddy and Bonnie Sislen and Father John Drinan, who was a Member of Congress. In addition to delegations from the United States and Israel there were delegations from Jewish communities around the world. These conferences were used to set policy and to call the attention of the world to what was happening to the Jews of the Soviet Union.

Mission to Visit Refuseniks In April 1980, Pastor Steinbruck, Father Gene Brake, a Catholic priest, and I visited refuseniks in Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad. A paper detailing what happened on the mission is appended to this paper.

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 10 Voices of the Vigil Mission to the Soviet Union Early in 1980, the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington had arranged for John Steinbruck, the pastor of Luther Place Memorial Church, and Gene Brake, a Roman Catholic priest who worked with poor people in the Washington community, to undertake a mission to refuseniks in the Soviet Union. At that time I was first vice-president of the JCC. I decided to go along paying my own way.

In April 1980, the three of us left for a ten-day trip to Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad. Our primary purpose was to visit rufuseniks but we also planned, in the interest of ecumenism, to visit a Pentecostal Christian family from Siberia who had managed to obtain asylum in the American embassy in Moscow.

John and Gene had been very involved in the Soviet Jewry movement in Washington and we knew each other well. John and Gene often participated in the Soviet Jewry daily vigil at the Soviet Embassy. In fact, John always brought members of his church to man the vigil on Rosh Hashannah and , days when members of the Jewish community would not be there. John, Gene and I had also participated in an organization that John had founded called ProJeCt (Protestant, Jewish Catholic) that operated out of John’s church. This organization, which later became the N Street Village and now has its own large complex behind the church, provided a range of social services to homeless and poor people.

United States--Soviet relations were not good in 1980. The staff of the American Embassy was still being held hostage in Iran. The USSR had invaded Afghanistan and in retaliation President Carter had withdrawn the U.S. team from the summer Olympics, which were scheduled for Moscow later that year.

Before leaving for the Soviet Union we were thoroughly briefed by Samuel (Buddy) Sislen of the Jewish Community Council, which was an affiliate of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. On my own I also arranged for a briefing by Irene Manekofsky, the chair of the Washington Committee for Soviet Jewry, which was an affiliate of the Union of Councils for

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 11 Voices of the Vigil Soviet Jews. (Irene also served a chair of the Union of Councils, although I don’t remember if she was chair at the time or if that happened later.)

Both organizations gave us items such as blue jeans, tape recorders, watches, etc., which we could give to refuseniks, which they could sell to provide them with funds on which to live. We had white chocolate for the Prisoners of Conscience; children’s toys with moveable eyes (the best way I can describe them), which prisoners of conscience would give to guards to secure small favors, etc.

We were also instructed to take with us children’s slates on which we could write and when the plastic sheet was lifted the writing would disappear. Those were to be used to communicate sensitive information to refuseniks since it was to be assumed that their houses were bugged with listening devices. We also took with us books of blank crossword puzzles on which we could record information the refuseniks gave us that we might otherwise forget. The idea was that to a curious Soviet customs agent they would look like puzzles we were working on during our trip. I also had the phone numbers of the American embassy in Moscow and the American consulate in Leningrad for emergencies. We were cautioned that those phones were tapped and so we should assume that anything we said on them would be heard by the KGB (Soviet Secret Police). All of these precautions were necessary even though nothing we would be doing in the Soviet Union violated Soviet law.

Each of us had multiple lists of names and address of refuseniks. For our own use the lists were in the Roman alphabet and included the apartment numbers as well as the street addresses of the refuseniks and their telephone numbers. We had other slips that had a street address, but not the name or apartment number. The later lists were in Cyrillic alphabet and were to be given to taxi drivers.

We were briefed on how we would be scrutinized in customs and were advised that each of us should get in a separate customs line so that if one of us were stopped they would not know who was travelling with that person. We were told that all tourists were followed in the Soviet Union and that we should expect that. If the KGB wanted to intimidate you they would allow you to

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 12 Voices of the Vigil see you were being followed. If they wanted to get information about whom you were visiting, you would not see the people following you. (During the trip we never saw anyone following us.) We were told that we could expect that waiters, and others, would try to get us to change money on the black market, but we should never to do so since they were often KGB agents and the penalty for black market exchanges would probably be expulsion from the country.

We knew we would be visiting the three cities but did not know the order in which we would be visiting them or the hotels in which we would stay. That would be arranged by Intourist, the Soviet government tourist agency, and we would not be given the details until we arrived in the Soviet Union. In addition, we could expect to be booked to attend concerts, the opera, the circus, etc. and to have relatively little free time. An Intourist guide would accompany us everywhere and the guide would report to the KGB on what we did.

Since there were no longer any direct flights from the U.S. to the U.S.S.R., we took a Finnair flight from New York to Helsinki, stopping in Amsterdam and Copenhagen. In Helsinki we were booked on Aeroflot to Moscow. On the Aeroflot flight I noticed that Gene was reading some briefing documents concerning the refuseniks we were to visit. He had forgotten to get rid of the documents in Helsinki. I took papers and not wanting to take them into the airport where they would probably be discovered, I unobtrusively (I hope) wadded them up and threw them into the bulkhead of the airplane.

When we arrived in Moscow we went through passport control where the soldiers, with our passports in front of them, stared at each arriving passenger for several minutes. We had been told to expect this, as it was an attempt to intimidate early in the process. After we claimed our luggage, John, Gene and I each entered a different customs lane as we had been instructed. I got through very easily and was asked no questions. I soon became aware that John and Gene were experiencing difficulty and had been pulled out of line.

Soon all of the members of our tour group had gone through customs but there was no sign of my two friends. Also missing were two women members of our tour group, a mother from Chicago and her daughter from Cleveland. Our group waited for a half-hour or more with our

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 13 Voices of the Vigil Intourist guide. Our guide then informed our group that we would be taken by bus to our hotel and that the four missing members of our group would join us later.

After I checked in to the hotel I immediately phoned the American Embassy. Based on our briefings I knew that the phone was tapped at both ends. Since it was Friday night I also knew that no one would be working at the Embassy, but that the marine guard would answer the telephone and that the KGB would be listening in on the conversation. When the marine answered I told him that I was an American tourist and wanted the Embassy staff to know that four Americans had been detained at the airport. I assumed that the KGB member listening in on the conversation would report to his superiors that the American Embassy had been notified. The marine assured me that he would inform his superiors.

I then joined the group for dinner in the hotel restaurant. Just before we finished dinner John, Gene and the two women walked into the dinning room! I don’t know how much my phone call had to do with their getting released, but I believe it had some effect. John and Gene told me they had been taken into another room, had been stripped to their underwear and searched. In the search the Soviets had discovered the address lists of reuseniks they had been carrying and the lists had been taken from them. Fortunately, I had copies of everything that had been confiscated. (I later learned that the two women had Jewish religious items taken from them. It turned out that they were also on a mission to visit refuseniks but neither mission knew about the other one.) Later that evening I received a phone call from someone at the Embassy, who told me that the marine guard had told him of my call. I told him that the four Americans had been released. We made an appointment to visit the Embassy the next afternoon to report on what had happened to Gene and John.

The three of us talked it over and decided that since the Soviets were obviously on to us we would play tourist the next morning. We went with the tour group to the Kremlin Museum and afterwards we took a cab to the American Embassy where we briefed three staff members on what had happened. We then met with the Pentecostal family. John spoke to them, almost giving a sermon, and the Embassy staff member translated into Russian. From the Embassy, I phoned our first refusenik, Yuri Kosharovsky, who was one of the Hebrew teachers. The

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 14 Voices of the Vigil previous year, David Shneyer, the leader of the Fabrengen Fiddlers, a Jewish musical group had visited the USSR. One of the refuseniks he had met with had been Kosharovsky. Shneyer had written a song about him and the Fiddlers had played it at a concert I had attended. David made a tape of the concert and asked me to take it to Kosharovsky. I arranged to meet Kosharovsky in front of the synagogue that afternoon.

John wanted to meet with Kevin Klose, the Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post. John called Klose who picked us up at the Embassy and drove us to the synagogue. John told him about the experience he and Gene had had at the airport. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea since Klose might write an article about what had happened. I asked Klose not to mention my name in any article since I had gotten through undetected. Klose did write a story that was published in The Washington Post while we were in Moscow but did not mention my name.

For a number of years Soviet Jews had been meeting in front of the synagogue every Saturday afternoon. It was an act of fellowship and defiance and had become known as the spot where foreign Jews could go to meet the Soviet Jews. When we arrived we found about a hundred people, refuseniks, others thinking about leaving and some trying to make up their minds whether to file applications to leave, all milling around outside the synagogue. We met Kosharovsky and gave him the tape. We also sought out Professor Alexander Lerner who was the unofficial leader of the refusenik community. With him was Lev Ovschisser, from Minsk, who was visiting Lerner. Ovschisser had been a decorated pilot who had fought in World War II. When he was refused permission to emigrate to Israel, Ovschisser returned all of his military decorations to the Soviets. We told Lerner that we had items for him and he invited us to his apartment that evening.

We moved around and talked to a number of other refuseniks on our list. One was Ilya Essas. I gave him a book written and autographed by Michael Berenbaum, the Executive Director of the Jewish Community Council, concerning Museum where Berenbaum had previously worked. Essas was remarkable in that he had turned Orthodox and was studying Jewish law mostly on his own. He would not carry the book because it was Shabbat. Dr. Lerner took the book home with him and later got it to Essas. When Essas finally got to Israel years

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 15 Voices of the Vigil later, the Orthodox rabbinate examined him and gave him smicha (orthodox ordination as a rabbi)!

Our conversations outside the synagogue were carried on in English, Yiddish, German and some Hebrew. I am convinced that if we had known any other language some one there would have spoken it. We were approached by Dr. Naim Maimon, who asked us to come visit his apartment and we agreed to do so the next day. This was not an unusual request since refuseniks believed that contact with foreigners gave them some measure of protection and that being known in the West might keep the Soviets from taking action against them.

That evening we skipped dinner and took a taxi to Lerner’s apartment. In addition to Lerner, his wife, his son (who was in his mid twenties or early thirties), their Irish setter and Ovschisser were there. Lerner and his son spoke near perfect English, but Mrs. Lerner and Ovschisser knew no English so I spoke Yiddish with them. Conversing with Ovschisser was easy. His Yiddish and his accent were identical to that of my grandparents since all three came from Belarus.

We gave Lerner the items for the prisoners and many of the gifts we had brought with us with telling him to use the money he would get from their sale for the “fund.” Lerner maintained the “fund” to provide money for refuseniks who had lost their jobs after applying to emigrate. Mrs. Lerner, who had been visited by Elsie Trombka on previous occasions, suffered from arthritis. Elsie had given me Tylenol for her, which I left there. I also left my copy of the New York Times, which customs had surprisingly not taken from me, with Lerner’s son.

Before we left Washington we had gotten word that tourists who had attempted to visit refuseniks in Kiev had been beaten up. We were told to ask Lerner, who would know, whether it was safe for us to conduct visits in Kiev. Lerner assured us that it was safe. I then pointed to names of refuseniks in Kiev and asked Lerner to tell us which ones were most important to visit. To my surprise he answered me verbally, mentioning names. I asked why he was doing so since his apartment was known to be bugged and the KGB would now know whom we were going to visit. Lerner said that I didn’t understand and that the KGB in Moscow didn’t talk to the KGB in Kiev!

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I had taken a camera with me and had taken pictures of the Pentecostals and the crowd outside the synagogue. Inexplicably, I forgot to take pictures in Lerner’s apartment. When we left, Dr. Lerner walked us out to flag down a taxi. I knew Lerner’s history and that he had been a communist and someone well regarded in cybernetics. I asked him if when he had been younger and a communist if he had believed in the cause. He said, “Of course I believed. We thought we were going to change the world.”

When he was interrogated at the airport one of the items in John Steinbruck’s luggage that particularly interested his interrogators was the tape recorder that John was bringing as a gift for a refusenik. When he got back to the hotel that evening the tape recorder was missing from John’s room. John reported it missing to the hotel and the hotel reported it to the police. The police asked to see John’s suitcase in which the tape recorder had been stored. When they told John to open the suitcase the tape recorder had miraculously reappeared. We had no doubt that the KGB had taken the recorder, checked it out and then replaced it in his suitcase.

The next day we visited Maimon in his apartment, which was filled with books. He pointed out that his phone had been cut off after he had asked for permission to leave for Israel.

The following day we left for Kiev. The first day we visited Isaak Tzitverblit, his wife and son, Naftali. The son had been attacked and beaten up a few days before and still had some of the marks on his face. We left a number of gifts with them. The second night our tour group was scheduled to go to an opera, La Boheme, that was to be performed in Russian. At the end of the first act, John, Gene and I left, of course without telling the Intourist guide, and took a cab attempting to visit Kim Friedman. When we got to Friedman’s apartment we found no one there so we took another cab to the apartment of Vladimir Kislik. Kislik was a scientist who had been refused permission to leave because he knew “state secrets” but had been told that he would be allowed to leave a year later since they thought, “he had suffered enough.” Over a year had passed and he still had not been allowed to leave. In the interim, in order to allow his wife and son to leave, Kislik had divorced her so that she was no longer “tainted.” When we visited Kislik, his wife and son were already in Israel. John, Gene and I pooled our available rubles and

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 17 Voices of the Vigil gave them to Kislik. We suggested he use them to start a fund similar to the one Lerner maintained in Moscow.

While in Kiev we knew we wanted to visit Babi Yar, the killing field where the Nazis had gunned down about 90,000 Jews on Yom Kippur after they occupied the city. The Soviets had never acknowledged that Jews were killed there saying only that Soviet citizens had been killed. We were planning to visit the site on our own when we learned that in fact our tour group was scheduled to visit it. At Babi Yar, Gene, John and I recited Kaddish in front of the group. Afterwards, I wandered around the grounds where I encountered a young man who did not speak English but did speak some German. I asked him what was inscribed on the monument. He said, “soldiers shoot people.” I asked him if the people who were shot were Jews. He said they were. I asked him if he was a Jew. He told me he was and I told him I was also. We said “shalom” to each other and I rejoined the tour group.

I need to digress at this point. We had been warned to be suspicious of people approaching us and after the encounter John and Gene had at the airport we were doubly suspicious. One apparently American woman had joined our tour group a day late and we wondered if the KGB had placed her there after the airport interrogation? When we got back on the bus after Babi Yar, she was sitting in her seat crying. When I asked why she was crying I found out she had been touched by the Kaddish since her mother was a Holocaust survivor. It turns out she was really an American and was a reporter for the San Diego Union. On returning to the States she wrote a story about the trip mentioning us.

We visited many museums, etc. with the tour group. In one museum in Kiev someone joined me when I was walking around and told me she was a Jew from Rostov. I asked her in Yiddish if he spoke Yiddish. She answered me in German. It might have been perfectly innocent, but I decided not to take a chance and avoided her. (Also in the dinning room in Moscow, a waiter offered us four rubles for the dollar. The Soviet currency was artificially pegged at $1.45 to the ruble, so it would have been very advantageous to make the exchange, but we were suspicious and ignored the offer.)

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 18 Voices of the Vigil We spent the last part of the trip in Leningrad (now once again called St. Petersburg). Our first night there we visited Aba Taratuta and his wife. When we entered their apartment we found their teen-aged son playing monopoly on the floor. Aba was a scientist who had been fired after he had applied to emigrate. He was one of the most resourceful refuseniks we ran into in the Soviet Union and seemed very much in command of his unfortunate situation. He told us that the KGB had recently confiscated his guest book. He now had a new guest book and we had the honor of being the first people to sign it. When it was time for us to leave he took us to the street and stepped in front of a taxi to get it to stop for us. John remarked to me that the man had so much self-confidence that if he were put in the middle of Washington or any other strange city he would know how to get around and how the system worked after a few days there.

The next day we visited Ilya Shastakovsky and his wife. We had no gift for him and he said he needed nothing. However, he finally did say that since he was an English teacher he could use a tape recorder. We promised him that we would send him a tape recorder with the next tourist who visited refuseniks in Leningrad. We offered some chewing gum to his child. Ilya told us that he used sticks of gum as gifts to the butcher to get good cuts of meat. We promptly emptied our pockets of all of the gum and candy bars we had and gave them all to him.

On the last day we met with Grigory Genusov and his wife in their apartment. Lev Furman and his new bride were there as was a young Jewish man from Novosibirsk. The latter, who already knew some Hebrew, was on his way to Moscow to study Hebrew with Kosharovsky. The young man had not yet applied to leave so was not a refusenik.

The Furmans had wanted to be married by a rabbi, but the rabbi in Leningrad would not marry them because the bride had not gone to the mikvah. The Furmans then arranged to be married by a shochet! Since everyone in the Soviet Union had to be married in a state ceremony anyway, it mattered little to them if a rabbi or a shochet conducted the religious ceremony.

As a precaution we had notified the American Consulate in Leningrad that we were there and where we were staying. About the second day in the city we received a call from a Consulate official notifying us that the U.S. President, , had sent the military to Iran to attempt

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 19 Voices of the Vigil to rescue the American hostages in Tehran and that the mission had failed. The official did not know how the Soviets might react and was cautioning us to be careful.

We left the Soviet Union by plane to Helsinki. Many of the passengers on the plane were Finns who had visited Leningrad for the weekend. We were told that the drinking laws in the Soviet Union were more lenient than in Finland and that many came for that reason. When we landed in Helsinki, the Finns broke out in applause. We joined them being happy to leave the Soviet Union.

John, Gene and I spoke about our trip at a number of Washington area synagogues and organizations that year. We also contacted appropriate Members of Congress who were working on the behalf of some of the refuseniks we had met. Buddy Sislen, on the JCC staff, wrote articles about the trip to be published in the Washington Jewish Week. Buddy called me and told me that the article was ready and asked me to come over and proof it. I was busy at work and could not get there that afternoon. Knowing there was a publishing deadline I told Buddy to go ahead and submit the article. I did not realize that the article was in the first person, as though I had written it. I later found that it contained an inaccuracy, in that it said that when growing up I remembered listening to relatives talking about in the Ukraine, when in actuality my relatives were from Belarus. However, the gist of the article was accurate.

I wrote letters to each of the refuseniks we had visited and enclosed pictures we had taken of them. Some of the refuseniks had relatives who had gotten out of the Soviet Union. In those cases I also contacted the relatives, told them about our trip and sent them pictures. The relatives wrote back to me but, with one exception, I believe the Soviets did not permit the refuseniks to receive the letters. Genusov not only received the letters but wrote me several letters in response.

In retrospect the Soviet Jewish refuseniks, those we had met and the thousands we had not met, were the most heroic people I knew, or probably will ever know. To act as they did in the face of that huge totalitarian regime and not be afraid was remarkable. Many of them were sent to

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 20 Voices of the Vigil prison in the gulag or to mental institutions for attempting to leave but in the end they were successful in their struggle to emigrate.

Epilogue to Soviet Trip In 1990, I had the first opportunity since the trip to the Soviet Union to again visit Israel. In the ten years since my trip to the Soviet Union all of the refuseniks I had visited had been allowed to emigrate. All had settled in Israel except for the Shastakovskys who had joined family in Canada. I decided that while in Israel I would visit as many of “my” refuseniks as I could to see how they were doing in Israel.

Kislik was living in an absorption center outside of Jerusalem and met me in my hotel lobby. Shortly after our 1980 visit he had been confined in a mental hospital where he was given drugs. He now told me that his wife, whom he had divorced so that she and their son could leave the country, had remarried. She, her new husband and the son had moved to California. Kislik told me that his wife had told him that it was better for him not to attempt to see the son, but Kislik was determined to see him. He knew that refuseniks were sometimes brought to America to speak and asked if I could help him get such an assignment? When I returned to Washington I told his story to the appropriate agencies and asked them to help if they could. To the best of my knowledge Kislik was not brought to the U.S. I don’t know if he ever made it on his own or if he saw his son again.

That evening I took Kislik to dinner in a restaurant. I had to order for him since the choices on the menu overwhelmed him. Afterwards I asked him whether ten years before when we met in Kiev he had ever dreamed that the two of us would be having dinner together in a restaurant in Jerusalem. His response was, “I never doubted it.”

Taratuta now lived in Haifa where he was a professor at the Technion. When I phoned him he told me that his son, who was now a painter, was opening an exhibit in a gallery in Tel Aviv in a few days. I went to the galley opening. By chance someone from the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, when she heard I was planning to meet with former refuseniks, gave me a painting that Taratuta’s son had painted in Leningrad and had given another visitor to take out of the

Silver Memoir Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Page 21 Voices of the Vigil country. I met the Taratutas and returned the painting to young man I had last seen playing monopoly in Leningrad. I found the father to be the same self assured man I had met in Leningrad.

Maimon, the Tzitverblits and the Genusovs were living in the same Absorption Center outside of Tel Aviv. I visited all three in one evening. The Tzitverblit son was doing well at the university. The father, who was by now in his seventies, was angry that he was not employed as an engineer in Israel. Probably his age and the changes in technology since he had last worked were not in his favor. Maimon was living in an apartment which was sparsely furnished. He asked me if I remembered that when I had visited him in Moscow his phone had been cut off. He said wryly, “Here I don’t have a phone either.” Genusov was employed and seemed to be doing well. His pre-teen aged daughter had just returned from the visiting a friend in the U.S. When our visit ended he drove me back to my Tel Aviv hotel in his new Mitsubishi.

Professor Lerner had a position with the Weitzman Institute in Rehovat. I did not get to Rehovat, which I regret since Lerner died soon after.

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