Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union appears so far to be unaffected by Monday’s overthrow of President Mikhail Gorbachev.
“People appear to be leaving, and there appears to not yet be any change in Soviet emigration policy,” an official at the U.S. State Department said Tuesday.
The consular and refugee offices at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow “are up and working as normal,” the official said.
In Jerusalem, Simcha Dinitz, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, described the emigration situation as “business as usual.”
A Jewish Agency spokesman said its operations throughout the Soviet Union were functioning normally and that offices of OVIR, the Soviet visa agency, were “open to the public.”
The agency, which coordinates immigration to Israel, reported the arrival Tuesday of two planeloads of Jewish emigres who had left the Soviet Union after Monday’s coup.
About 75 other Soviet Jews arrived Tuesday in Budapest, one of the Eastern European capitals through which emigres pass en route to Israel.
In Washington, Martin Wenick, executive director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, reported that about 500 mainly Israel-bound Soviet Jews had arrived at various Eastern European transit points.
He said about 50 Soviet Jews visited the Israeli Consulate in Moscow on Tuesday “for either entry visas or for information about services.”
NO ‘ABSOLUTE PANIC’
Describing the overall climate in the Soviet Jewish community, Wenick said, “People are concerned, and there is an uncertainty about the future, but we don’t sense an absolute panic.”
Among the Jewish activities apparently disrupted by the coup were the operation of several Jewish camps, said Wenick. They were “disbanded because the feeling was the children ought to be back with their parents,” he said.
But Jewish camps run by the Jewish Agency were running as usual Tuesday. And Lishkas Ezras Achim, a Brooklyn-based organization affiliated with the Lubavitch Hasidic movement Chabad, said it would continue to operate dozens of summer camps for Jews in the Soviet Union.
It also said it would continue with plans to send rabbis to the Soviet Union to help the Jewish community prepare for the High Holy Days.
Agudath Israel of America currently has about 50 rabbis or teachers in the Soviet Union. Some have “expressed the intent to remain in the country, while others are cutting their stay short,” the group said in a statement Tuesday.
On Monday, 55 Soviet Jewish teachers in training attended a seminar on “philosophy of the Jewish home” at the Aleph Society’s Judaic Studies Center in Moscow.
Rabbi Yehiel Poupko of Chicago, who is leading the seminar, said the center “expects to continue its teaching activities regardless of changes in government.”
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.
