Olga Goldfarb, daughter of the Soviet emigre David Goldfarb, arrived in New York Sunday for a one-week visit with her father, who is recuperating here from lung cancer surgery. She was granted a one-week temporary visa by Soviet emigration authorities last week, a move considered unusual for a refusenik whose application to permanently emigrate from the Soviet Union was concurrently pending.
David Goldfarb’s seven-year ordeal as a refusenik was abruptly terminated October 16 when industrialist Armand Hammer flew him and his wife Cecilia to the United States aboard his private jet. The 67-year-old retired geneticist was a patient in a Moscow hospital, suffering from complications of diabetes and heart disease.
Upon his arrival in New York, he was immediately admitted to Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center where tests October 29 revealed lung cancer. On November 2, David Goldfarb sent a letter to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev asking that his daughter, who remained behind in Moscow, be allowed to emigrate to join him in New York with her husband, Yuri Lev, and two daughters, Katya, 10, and Nadia. 4.
In his letter, David Goldfarb said of his daughter’s family that “They have been trying to obtain exit visas together with me, and there is no reason on earth why they shouldn’t be permitted to follow me now … The chances that my daughter will make it without high-level intervention are small unless your overall emigration policy changes.” Goldfarb also praised Gorbachev’s “recent reforms in other fields,” which “make me believe that change is possible.”
‘A MIRACLE IN MOSCOW”
Goldfarb was scheduled for surgery November 5, and Columbia-Presbyterian was asked to provide that information to the Soviets. Olga then applied for permission for a temporary tourist visa to visit her father in the hospital, and was told on November 11 to report to the OVIR emigration office two days later to pick up her passport, which contained a visa good for one week’s stay. The 34-year-old pediatrician was given permission only for herself and was refused permission to bring along her older daughter, as she had requested.
Olga told reporters at a news conference at Kennedy Airport that the granting of the emergency visa “happened so quickly. I didn’t think I would get it, but I did. The Soviet Union is unpredictable.” She also said her parent’s release “is considered a miracle in Moscow,” and that she believes her visa is part of that miracle.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
