May 12, 1988 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS 10853 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS MR. PRESIDENT, BRING HOME retary General. There have been assurances Daily News featuring the exploits of Al ABE STOLAR that human rights will also be on the agenda. Capone, the streetcars, the lake. Abe Stolar is 76 now and ailing and I'm not His mind is filled with a cloudy, quaint, left-wing Chicago, an E.L. Doctorow vision HON. SANDER M. LEVIN sure how much time he has left to realize his writ small and faint. His accent is still Hum­ OF MICHIGAN final dream-to settle in Israel . boldt Park, but all of it fades and fades IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES There is now a movement afoot in a some more, and he is always asking. "Do number of quarters urging the President to Thursday, May 12, 1988 they still have that?" "Do they still say press Mr. Gorbachev for the release of all the that?" "Is all that gone now? Is it? Sure. Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, per­ Stolars. I support that effort and I urge my col­ That must be all gone now." haps most of my colleagues have by now leagues in the House to speak out on behalf In the '20s and '30s, many Western intel­ seen the story which appeared on the front of the Stolars and to join me in imploring lectuals were entranced with the Soviet Union. Most of them knew little or nothing page of the "Style" section in the May 10 President Reagan to seek to bring the Stolars Washington Post. It's entitled, "The Bitter Pil­ about the various repressions here, and home with him so they may then emigrate to what they did know about the history of grimage of Abe Stolar" and I would like to Israel. early Bolshevism they sometimes willfully submit it now for inclusion in the CONGRES­ ignored. SIONAL RECORD. THE BITTER PILGRIMAGE OF ABE STOLAR-A CHICAGOAN'S 57 YEARS IN THE U.S.S.R. Abe Stolar's parents, Morris and Esther, Abe Stolar is a native Chicagoan whose were not intellectuals, but their passion for parents had emigrated to the United States (By David Remnick) the revolution was at the heart of their from the Soviet Union in 1909. His parents Moscow.-In the early days of the Ameri­ lives. They were born in the Byelorussian longed to return and in 1931 the family sold can romance with Bolshevism, Abe Stolar city of Kishinev and emigrated to the all their belongings so they could return. Abe was a member of the John Reed Young Pio­ United States in 1909, a time when Cossacks agreed to join them, and so he emigrated to neers, Chicago chapter, and he would march were killing Jews by the thousands. In Hum­ down the sidewalks of Division Street wear­ boldt Park, the Stolars lived with other the U.S.S.R. Although initially buoyed at the ing sandwich boards reading "Save Soviet Jews and Poles, and they worked as print­ thought of living in a new country, Abe gradu­ Russia." ers. ally became disaffected with Soviet life. Abe "I was a proud communist and my family "My sister and I were born in Chicago, so survived Stalin's reign of terror and Breznev's and friends all looked to the U.S.S.R. for in­ we were American citizens right away," repressive regime but by the late 1960's he spiration," he says. The glory day came in Stolar says. "But right from the start my concluded that he had had enough. 1930 when Stolar and his parents joined father always wanted to go back. His whole Abe Stolar is not an observant Jew. But like hundreds of other American communists in culture was Russian. so many other Soviet Jews who never before moving to Moscow, capital of the "great ex­ "When we set out on the voyage, I was periment." feeling great, with the sea air and the contemplated emigrating to Israel, news of Is­ It was the fantastic voyage of his genera­ future all ahead of us. I never thought I'd rael's stunning victory in the Six-Day War in tion. "We were idealists, and we wanted to stay forever, maybe two years or so, enough 1967 stirred him-and steered him-to a build the workers' paradise," Stolar says. He for a great adventure, that's all. return to the homeland of his biblical foref a­ is an old man now, 76 years old with a hear­ "We sold all our stuff, all the furniture, thers. ing aid and a lousy leg. He sits in his weary nearly everything we had, because my In 1975 Abe, his wife Gita, and son Michael apartment on the southwest rim of Moscow father insisted that the first five-year plan finally received permission to emigrate and and stares out his window at a landscape of was starting and soon Russia would have again Abe found himself selling all his belong­ concrete and dust. A line of buses and troop plenty of everything for everybody. What a trucks rumbles down the road. Stolar tries joke. My mother had brought our dishes ings. In an infamous, dramatic turn of events, to catch a fly with his hands and misses by and wrapped them in old clothes to keep Soviet officials stopped the Stolars just before two feet. "We were idealists," he says final­ them from breaking. It turned out that departure, effectively preventing them from ly, "and we were painfully damn naive. A those rags helped us get through some emigrating. Since then, Abe's son Michael has paradise. That was the big damn joke." tough times in Moscow. My mother ended married. He and his wife Julia have one child Stolar is a plain man made extraordinary up selling them as if they were gold." with one more on the way. by the place he moved to. But he gradually When the Stolars arrived at Moscow's The Soviets have again given Abe, Gita, grew disillusioned and finally disgusted with Byelorussia train station, Stolar was unim­ and Michael permission to leave, but they life here, and for more than 15 years he's pressed. Gorky Street, one of Moscow's wanted to leave, live out his life in Israel. main thoroughfares, seemed like something refuse to let Michael's wife go, claiming that He doesn't have a very firm picture in his out of a 19th-century tintype, with cobble­ Julia's mother has a financial claim against mind of what Israel might be like, though a stones and streetcars and mud all around, her. In truth, there is no financial claim but relative once sent him a coded post card and the buildings no more than two or three Julia's mother refuses to sign the document that said, "Come running." stories high, and the plaster cracking, and admitting as much out of pure vindictiveness. He has tried. Once, in 1975, the Soviets the paint faded from winter. The Soviet emigration office could intervene if said he and his wife Gita and their son Mik­ "Right away, I had all these little criti­ they wished but again, this is the work of hail could go. They packed their things and cisms of Moscow," Stolar says, "but my Soviet Government whose pledge of glasnost drove out to Sheremetyvo Airport on the father was always there to explain that the appointed day for the afternoon flight· to country had been through a revolution and has yet to fully extend to human rights. The Vienna. But at the passport window, the a terrible civil war and they needed years to Stolars have agreed they will only emigrate if police told him to turn around. His wife, build communism." the whole family is permitted. they told him, had learned "state secrets" The Stolars handed over their American During Passover this year, the traditional while working at a chemical institute years passports and received Soviet ones. No one time for Jews to commemorate their freedom before. thought to ask what this meant-"We all as­ from slavery, 75 of my colleagues joined me In the apartment on Vernodskovo Street, sumed we were free to come and go"-but in in sending a letter to Julia's mother requesting there are a few remnants of Stolar's Chica­ the end this transfer of documents would that she sign the document, thus freeing the go. His son papered one wall with American lead to death for Morris Stolar and an end­ cigarette ads and a bathroom wall with less residence for his son Abe. Stolars. I forwarded the letter and the signa­ chewing gum wrappers. He keeps a stack of The family lived in an apartment building tures to Secretary of State George Shultz and Herald Tribunes in his desk. He remembers surrounded on all sides by fields that were President Reagan. some things about Chicago, the city he left populated with pigs and sheep. Esther Sto­ The President will be traveling to Moscow 57 years ago: the basement meetings in sup­ lar's idealism was tempered by her daily soon for an arms control summit with the Sec- port of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Chicago walks through the muddy fields. "She was e This "bullet" symbol identifies statements or insertions which are not spoken by a Member of the Senate on the floor. Matter set in this typeface indicates words inserted or appended, rather than spoken, by a Member of the House on the floor.