At demonstrations in major cities all over the U.S. and by telephone calls to the USSR, Americans expressed solidarity this week with some 60 Jewish women in the Soviet Union on a hunger strike to protest the continued denial of exit visas to Jews, some of whom applied for them as long as 15 years ago.
The fasting began Saturday night, to coincide with International Women’s Day in the Soviet Union, a Socialist holiday. On Sunday night, the ongoing struggle of refuseniks was described in detail to members of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry by Natan Sharansky, who spent nine years in the Soviet Gulag before he was freed and allowed to go to Israel in February 1986.
On Monday morning, a large crowd, mainly Jewish women, demonstrated outside the Soviet Mission to the United Nations. They all wore yellow ribbons, each inscribed with the name of a woman hunger striker in Moscow, Leningrad or other Soviet cities. The yellow ribbon has become a symbol for the release of hostages.
NA’AMAT USA, The Women’s Labor Zionist Organization of America, placed a telephone call from its New York office Monday to Nellie Shpeizman, a hunger striker, in her apartment in Leningrad. Lydia Cutler, a NA’AMAT member who speaks Russian, told Shpeizman: “I want you to know that we are with you all the way. We love you and understand how strong-willed and brave you are, how difficult your life is.”
In Washington, Rep. Constance Morella (R. Md.) spoke by telephone from her Capitol Hill office to Lev Shapiro in Leningrad, whose wife Leah was among those fasting. She said she was concerned about his family. “All of us here care very much about individual freedom and the ability to leave a country for another one,” Morella told Shapiro who has been seeking to leave the Soviet Union since 1977.
SHARANSKY PRESENTS FREEDOM AWARD
Sharansky, who changed his name shortly after he was reunited with his wife Avital in Israel last year, attended the Annual Freedom Dinner of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry at the Sands in Atlantic Beach, L.I., Sunday night to personally present its annual Anatoly Shcharansky Freedom Award for 1987 to New York State Sen. Norman Levy, who was cited for his fight for human rights in the Soviet Union. Fourteen previous award winners, all civic, political and community leaders, were also honored.
Sharansky was accompanied by his mother Ida Milgrom and his brother Leonid, who were allowed to leave the Soviet Union several months after his departure. Milgrom spoke in Russian, translated by Leonid.
Also present was Lev Blitshtein, released only three weeks ago after a 12-year struggle for an exit visa.
At a press conference preceding the dinner, Sharansky cautioned against placing too much trust in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s publicly proclaimed policy of “glasnost” (openness). He said an example of the hollowness of the new “liberalization” was the death in Israel last week of Soviet emigre Michael Shirman from leukemia. Had his sister, Inessa Fleurova been allowed to leave Moscow for Israel a year earlier, when she first applied, he might have been saved by the bone marrow transplant for which she was the only suitable donor.
TWO TRAGIC CASES CITED
Sharansky also referred to the death from cancer in Washington last month of another long-term refusenik, Inna Meiman, who might have been kept alive had she been allowed to go to the West earlier for treatment.
The Shirman and Meiman cases were examples of Soviet foot-dragging and meanness, Sharansky charged. They are “trying to raise the price they can get from public opinion,” he said.
Nevertheless, he held out hope for other refuseniks whose struggle seems doomed if recent Soviet statements are to be believed. Eight were told last month that they were “never to leave.” But, Sharansky said, “As you know from the past, when the KGB says ‘never,’ sometimes it becomes a little bit shorter.
“They do it to frighten people — to draw attention to facts and increase the price. We see how contradictory are their own statements.” He spoke of 15-year refusenik Vladimir Raiz who was told “don’t come back till the year 2000” to apply for an exit visa.
It is a game of mental torture, Sharansky said, noting that Raiz was part of a “big wave of 300 new refusals” since the Soviets’ new “liberalized” emigration regulations took effect on January 1.
Soviet policy and statements are two-faced, one for the outside world, another internal, he said “Gorbachev’s real concern is not human rights, it’s his economy,” Sharansky said.
THE FATE OF THE HUNGER-STRIKING WOMEN
Ida Milgrom appeared at the rally outside the Soviet Mission Monday to read the names of the hunger-striking Jewish women in the USSR which were written on the yellow ribbons worn by the protestors. Many of them were friends, acquaintances and other people she had promised not to forget when she left Moscow.
“I know these women well, I was close to them. Their fate is connected with our activity here,” Milgrom said. Other speakers were Brooklyn District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman and New York City council member Ruth Messinger.
The demonstration was sponsored by the Coalition to Free Soviet Jews, Women’s American ORT, B’nai B’rith Women and NA’AMAT USA. It was mounted at the request of 60 Soviet women to publicize their plight and their hunger strike.
The women sent a message to their supporters here noting that “For 10 years or more . . . we have been ousted from the social and communal life of Soviet society . . . almost all of us women and our husbands, as well, are deprived of the right to work in our professional fields . . . After many years of work in under-qualified jobs, our professional qualifications have deteriorated.”
The women noted that in addition to loss of their jobs they were subject to anti-Zionist, anti Israel propaganda and kept under surveillance by security authorities. Their appeal for help was signed by women from Moscow, Leningrad, Bendery, Kiev and Riga.
The telephone calls to the Soviet Union reached individual refuseniks but were heartening to the entire emigration movement. Shpeizan told Cutler of NA’AMAT that there were many people in her apartment listening to their conversation. Her case is especially desperate.
“I want you to know that we are fighting not only for our right to leave Russia, but also for the actual life of my husband, who has bone cancer. He doesn’t have much time to waste. Please let people know about it,” she urged.
Rep. Morella’s telephone call to Lev Shapiro was prompted by the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Morella, a member of the Post Office and Civil Service Committee, promised she would try to do something about letters not being delivered to Shapiro and said she would write to him shortly.
Shapiro and his wife have two children. He lost his job as a computer engineer after applying for an exit permit and is now doing menial work.
“But he said that wasn’t important,” Morella told reporters. “He was ebullient and very upbeat. He kept repeating his gratitude and the need for us to be together and that you can’t give up hope.”
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.
