Print
E-mail
Comment
Rate
A look back: Visiting with refuseniks in 1985
Click image to enlarge
|
BY: CYNTHIA DETTELBACH Editor
“On October afternoons, gray comes early to Moscow. It is a heavy, leaden gray that hangs like a pall over the city.
Wrapped within the gloom, drab-looking people hurry along the streets and into and out of the bowels of the city’s vast underground metro system …
“Life for a refusenik (and for most Soviet citizens, one suspects) is as oppressive as a leaden Moscow sky …”
With those words I began “Jews of Strength,” my Nov. 1, 1985, CJN cover story of an unforgettable trip I took with four other Clevelanders and an Akron resident to Moscow, Leningrad and Riga in the Soviet Union. Our mission: to connect with the brave Jews who, against all odds, were connecting with their Jewish roots and had applied to immigrate to Israel.
In addition to being denied their longed-for visas, these so-called refuseniks were punished in other ways. The government often stripped them of their jobs and academic degrees; those who dared learn or teach Hebrew were frequently harassed and even imprisoned.
Understandably, the Soviet government was not going to look kindly on Americans (their Cold War enemy) wishing to visit and support these refuseniks. The six of us n activist Cliff Savren (see page 42), Jewish Community Federation Associate Mark Gurvis, Rabbis Daniel Roberts (Temple Emanu El) and David Horowitz (Temple Israel/ Akron) and teacher Dr. Nancy Lerner and I n hoped to meet with refuseniks while staying beneath the Soviets’ radar. No easy task in the land of Big Brother, the KGB and sophisticated listening devices!
Abe Bayer, then head of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, came to Cleveland to coach us. He advised:
• Disguise the real names of the people you will visit. (In my address book, for example, I listed the Bogomolnys as the Roaches!)
• Bring in requested items (medicines, prescription eyeglasses, magazines, Hebrew books, information about Israel, Jewish ritual items, blue jeans); bring out a list of new requests for the next group of visitors. Blue jeans, which could be sold for many times their value on the black market, were a crucial source of revenue for refuseniks who had either lost their jobs or were reduced to menial jobs and pay.
• When questioned by Russian customs officers, be prepared to “explain” away the forbidden religious items. (The tallit, I told the man examining my luggage, was my shawl; the mezuzah, which I had filled with aspirin, my pillbox; the precious mezuzah parchment was folded admidst the bills in my wallet and never seen.)
• Never phone a refusenik from your hotel or even within a two-block radius. Take only mass transport to see the families. Try to speak out of doors or away from known bugged areas.
As a journalist, Bayer warned me, I was the person most at risk for harassment or worse; the last thing the Russians wanted was publicity about their refuseniks. So my only professional “tools” were two 3-by-5-inch spiral notebooks, which I carried in my pockets at all times.
Looking back, all the prep work seemed like grownups playing at a kid’s game or taking a part in a B-grade spy movie. That sense of unreality would change, however, when we met the refuseniks.
Our first encounter, outdoors and several blocks from our hotel, was with brilliant mathematician/phy- sicist Ilya Essas, reduced, after refusal, to the job of night watchman. A ba’al teshuvah (newly observant) and a self-taught Talmud and Hebrew scholar, he was secretly teaching Jewish culture and Hebrew to others. We had brought him issues of Time, Newsweek and Scientific American, which he hungrily accepted. “They’re a drop of water,” he mused, “to someone thirsting for information.”
Similarly, every refusenik we met during our 10-day stay asked us first for Western newspapers or magazines. As I wrote in 1985, “It’s been several months since many have seen any real news, and they are eager for everything they can get their hands on.”
Tanya Bogolmolny would joke that her husband was so close to his shortwave radio (able to pick up broadcasts from Radio Free Europe and Israel Radio) that “he thinks it is another organ of his body.” Soviet newscasts, we were told by many a refusenik, were always attacking the U.S. and the “imperialist aggressor, Israel.”
With real news in short supply, mail for refuseniks was even scarcer. Ludmilla, who was known in the West for her leadership role in Moscow’s observant Jewish community, had received no letters in a year. She, like others we spoke to, suspected her mail was being intercepted by the authorities.
While we met with Essas on the street, we more frequently made our way to the refuseniks’ homes, visiting usually in groups of two or three. Cliff Savren had learned the Cyrillic alphabet, so he could read the street and metro signs we all needed to get to our respective destinations.
Wherever we went, we were welcomed warmly. Not so much for what we brought, but for the simple act of making human contact.
“It’s good to know you’re not abandoned,” effused fresh-faced, intense Anna Charney, 25, who had been in refusal for six years. She and her husband Yuri, 28, only wanted us to stay with them to talk and listen. It was past midnight and hardly a prudent time for “tourists” to be out, when they walked us to the metro. Anna hugged us goodbye, tears in her eyes.
(to be continued)
cdettelbach@cjn.org
Wrapped within the gloom, drab-looking people hurry along the streets and into and out of the bowels of the city’s vast underground metro system …
“Life for a refusenik (and for most Soviet citizens, one suspects) is as oppressive as a leaden Moscow sky …”
With those words I began “Jews of Strength,” my Nov. 1, 1985, CJN cover story of an unforgettable trip I took with four other Clevelanders and an Akron resident to Moscow, Leningrad and Riga in the Soviet Union. Our mission: to connect with the brave Jews who, against all odds, were connecting with their Jewish roots and had applied to immigrate to Israel.
In addition to being denied their longed-for visas, these so-called refuseniks were punished in other ways. The government often stripped them of their jobs and academic degrees; those who dared learn or teach Hebrew were frequently harassed and even imprisoned.
Understandably, the Soviet government was not going to look kindly on Americans (their Cold War enemy) wishing to visit and support these refuseniks. The six of us n activist Cliff Savren (see page 42), Jewish Community Federation Associate Mark Gurvis, Rabbis Daniel Roberts (Temple Emanu El) and David Horowitz (Temple Israel/ Akron) and teacher Dr. Nancy Lerner and I n hoped to meet with refuseniks while staying beneath the Soviets’ radar. No easy task in the land of Big Brother, the KGB and sophisticated listening devices!
Abe Bayer, then head of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, came to Cleveland to coach us. He advised:
• Disguise the real names of the people you will visit. (In my address book, for example, I listed the Bogomolnys as the Roaches!)
• Bring in requested items (medicines, prescription eyeglasses, magazines, Hebrew books, information about Israel, Jewish ritual items, blue jeans); bring out a list of new requests for the next group of visitors. Blue jeans, which could be sold for many times their value on the black market, were a crucial source of revenue for refuseniks who had either lost their jobs or were reduced to menial jobs and pay.
• When questioned by Russian customs officers, be prepared to “explain” away the forbidden religious items. (The tallit, I told the man examining my luggage, was my shawl; the mezuzah, which I had filled with aspirin, my pillbox; the precious mezuzah parchment was folded admidst the bills in my wallet and never seen.)
• Never phone a refusenik from your hotel or even within a two-block radius. Take only mass transport to see the families. Try to speak out of doors or away from known bugged areas.
As a journalist, Bayer warned me, I was the person most at risk for harassment or worse; the last thing the Russians wanted was publicity about their refuseniks. So my only professional “tools” were two 3-by-5-inch spiral notebooks, which I carried in my pockets at all times.
Looking back, all the prep work seemed like grownups playing at a kid’s game or taking a part in a B-grade spy movie. That sense of unreality would change, however, when we met the refuseniks.
Our first encounter, outdoors and several blocks from our hotel, was with brilliant mathematician/phy- sicist Ilya Essas, reduced, after refusal, to the job of night watchman. A ba’al teshuvah (newly observant) and a self-taught Talmud and Hebrew scholar, he was secretly teaching Jewish culture and Hebrew to others. We had brought him issues of Time, Newsweek and Scientific American, which he hungrily accepted. “They’re a drop of water,” he mused, “to someone thirsting for information.”
Similarly, every refusenik we met during our 10-day stay asked us first for Western newspapers or magazines. As I wrote in 1985, “It’s been several months since many have seen any real news, and they are eager for everything they can get their hands on.”
Tanya Bogolmolny would joke that her husband was so close to his shortwave radio (able to pick up broadcasts from Radio Free Europe and Israel Radio) that “he thinks it is another organ of his body.” Soviet newscasts, we were told by many a refusenik, were always attacking the U.S. and the “imperialist aggressor, Israel.”
With real news in short supply, mail for refuseniks was even scarcer. Ludmilla, who was known in the West for her leadership role in Moscow’s observant Jewish community, had received no letters in a year. She, like others we spoke to, suspected her mail was being intercepted by the authorities.
While we met with Essas on the street, we more frequently made our way to the refuseniks’ homes, visiting usually in groups of two or three. Cliff Savren had learned the Cyrillic alphabet, so he could read the street and metro signs we all needed to get to our respective destinations.
Wherever we went, we were welcomed warmly. Not so much for what we brought, but for the simple act of making human contact.
“It’s good to know you’re not abandoned,” effused fresh-faced, intense Anna Charney, 25, who had been in refusal for six years. She and her husband Yuri, 28, only wanted us to stay with them to talk and listen. It was past midnight and hardly a prudent time for “tourists” to be out, when they walked us to the metro. Anna hugged us goodbye, tears in her eyes.
(to be continued)
cdettelbach@cjn.org
 |
 |
|
| Once out, it’s hard to get in … to U.S. | Pioneering refuseniks lead polarized lives in USSR |
Article Rating
Reader Comments
The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of clevelandjewishnews.com.
You must register with a valid email to post comments. Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments. Registration is free.
Registered users sign in here: |
Become a Registered User |
