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My Name Is Bert Silver

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My Name Is Bert Silver Soviet Jewry Memories Bert Silver 2009 My name is Bert Silver. I was born on June 30, 1931, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a community of 140,000 people of whom about 5,000 were Jews. 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 Israel 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 Soviet Union 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.
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