Sergey Kadinsky
Written Works
AJC Commemorates Freedom Struggle for Soviet Jews
This feature piece was submitted to a few local Jewish newspapers. It was published in Achdut, the English version of the Bukharian TImes, which serves the younger members of the community. The event in the article took place on January 9, 2008.
The Six Day War changed everything. For Israel, it was a miraculous military victory, and in the diaspora, it changed the identity of many Jews from passive observers to active participants in the struggle for freedom from totalitarianism. “1967 is thought to be the inaugural year for Soviet Jewry,” said Dr. Igor Branovan, director of Russian-American Jews for Israel and a board member of the American Jewish Committee. “It created a crack in the monolithic Soviet system.”
Twenty years after the war created a ripple of activism among diaspora Jews, the American Jewish Committee organized a rally in Washington, D.C. to express support for opening the Iron Curtain to Jewish emigration. Mindful of the accomplishments of the struggle to free Soviet Jews, the AJC held a reception on the 40th anniversary of the war and the 20th anniversary of the rally to honor its heroes, organizers, and beneficiaries. Dr. Branovan was raised in Kaliningrad, Russia, and immigrated to the United States 27 years ago, becoming a doctor and a leader in the local Russian-Jewish community.
Among the early activists was Boris Gorbis of Odessa, Ukraine. After watching a film about the United States in 1972, he spoke with his father about the possibility of leaving for America. Being a respected physics professor, his father harshly rebuked Gorbis for suggesting it, fearing the loss of his position in society. Gorbis applied to leave and in 1975, only his grandmother accompanied him to the train station. Soon after, his father lost his position, and was labeled a traitor and an unfit parent as a result of Gorbis’ act. Realizing that his loyalty to the state did not save his job, he too applied to leave the country. In the mean time, Gorbis settled in California, becoming a lawyer and leader in the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews. The father and son reunited in 1987 amid tears and emotions.
In the United States, the legacy of silence during the holocaust galvanized American Jews to speak out for the right of Soviet Jews to leave their country. Kara Stein remembers learning about Soviet Jews at her New Jersey summer camp. “We sang songs about Soviet Jews, including Natan Scharansky while he was imprisoned,” she said. “When I finally met him, he told me that he heard our songs.” Mark Schussel was a leader at the Jewish Federation in Detroit and created programs bringing together the Soviet Jewish immigrants and the local Jewish community. “In the first wave of Soviet emigration, the immigrants were given homes in gentile neighborhoods, and we were concerned about their loss of Jewish identity,” he said. As a solution, Schussel campaigned for the Federation to find homes for the immigrants in Jewish neighborhoods. His wife Rosie organized programs connecting immigrant families with local Jewish families in order to acculturate them to American and Jewish cultures.
Eager to see the situation of the Soviet Jews firsthand, Schussel traveled to Moscow in 1989, when the Soviet Union was undergoing glasnost, which was a gradual opening up of free speech in the country. “There is something about being an American that gives confidence in doing right,” he said. Schussel met Dr. Samuel Kliger, a refusenik who was awaiting his turn to leave the country. “I was standing in the presence of greatness,” he said, in reference to Kliger. Unlike Kliger, Schussel described himself as “being born with a silver spoon,” considering the ease of Jewish life in America, in contrast to Kliger’s life in Moscow. “He has done extraordinary things for the preservation of Jewish life.”
Schussel’s story of visiting the Soviet Union with seforim, mezuzot, and chizuk was shared at the podium by Edward Koch, who visited the country as a Congressman. “I visited a refusenik named Boris Kochubiyevsky, and the first letters of his name are in my name. My family came from Poland, but we may be related,” he quipped. Another honoree at the reception was Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who was described by AJC director David A. Harris as a political hero on issues regarding human rights. “Some of us are cynical about politics, but Chris Smith does not have a large Jewish constituency. He did it for the right reasons.”
A distinct honor was bestowed on Yuri Fedorov, who hijacked an airplane in 1970, in the hope of escaping Leningrad. He was one of the two gentiles in the crew of sixteen. Initially sentenced to death, his punishment was commuted to 15 years in a gulag as a result of pressure from the AJC and other human rights groups. Looking towards the legacy of the dissidents, Fedorov created a fund assist the veteran dissidents living in Russia. “The list of sixty to seventy names is not complete,” Fedorov said. “All of the people who received our assistance are honorable people who deserve it.”
Another item mentioned was the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which made human rights the benchmark of foreign trade policy. “It was pure genius,” Smith said. “It revolutionized human rights policy on many fronts.” Three decades later, the law used to open up the Iron Curtain is also used against nations engaging in human trafficking, as a result of efforts by Rep. Smith. Amid calls by Russia to repeal the law, the AJC is neutral. “We have led the call to repeal Jackson-Vanik pertaining to Ukraine,” Branovan said. “We felt strongly that it was time to repeal it for Ukraine.” Since the election of Viktor Yushchenko as president, the AJC has used its contacts in Ukraine to secure government protection for minorities and combat local racism.
Another concern raised involved the descendants of the movement to free Soviet Jews. How would their children be able to relate to this great movement? Present at the reception was Kliger’s daughter Hannah, a high school student in Brooklyn. “My father usually talks to me in English, but my mother insists that I speak Russian at home,” she said. Dmitry Shiglik said that education is important in order to keep the memory of the movement alive. “We cannot let the movement to let our people go be forgotten, especially in comparison to the silence during World War Two,” Shiglik said. Shiglik is the vice-president of Russian-American Jews for Israel, a Brooklyn-based advocacy group.
With an exhibit on refuseniks at Tel Aviv’s Diaspora Museum, a movie on the topic, and a growing number of Jews emigrating from Iran, the impact of the few brave dissidents defeating a totalitarian power will remain an important lesson in Jewish and human rights chronicles.
Heroes and activists reunited: Edward Koch (l.) Rosie Schussel, Mark Schussel, and Yuri Fedorov
Yuri Fedorov speaks in Russian as Boris Gorbis translates
One of the awards handed out shows the movement at its finest: a sizable crowd, pins and stamps carried by the people in the crowds.
Glossary:
chizuk- encouragement
refuseniks- Soviet Jews who suffered punishment for attempting to emigrate
seforim- religious Jewish books