Hidden Heroes – the Refuseniks
Earlier this year I met Pamela Braun Cohen (Pam) who told me that she had written a book about the “refuseniks” who were refused permission to leave the Soviet Union, starting in the 1960s. Pam became engaged early on in the movement to help these Jews, who suffered all sorts of intimidation: charges of treason, arrests, job loss, discrimination, interrogations, invasions of privacy, and much, much worse. By that I mean beatings, imprisonment in mental institutions and/or Siberian work camps, lengthy separation from relatives, and more. She became a local, then a national leader in one of the most effective NGOs agitating to free refuseniks: the UCSJ -Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.
Recently, Pam collected her thoughts about the fight to free these Jews in a book, “Hidden Heroes,” which was published by Gefen Publishing House in 2022 and is widely available in book stores and online. I recommend “Hidden Heroes” for those who want to refresh their memories of this tremendous effort to help fellow Jews, and to those who know little about this liberation of Jews from totalitarianism.
The movement of Soviet Jews to regain their heritage and freedom got a big boost after Israel’s amazing victory in the 1967 Six Day War. Soviet Jews’ knowledge and practice of their religion had been suppressed since the time of the 1917 Russian Revolution. Their embryonic struggle to learn and practice Judaism gained publicity and notoriety in June, 1970 with the astounding news of the hijacking of an empty Soviet civilian aircraft by a group of 16 Soviet refuseniks trying to escape to the West.
The period of enhanced suffering by those who had awakened to their Jewish heritage started in the mid-1960s, accompanied by a trickle of emigrants allowed to leave. The refuseniks’ attempts to leave the Soviet Union had mixed success during a few periods in the early and late 1970s, and during the Gorbachev era beginning in 1985.
Of major significance was US Senator Henry Jackson’s advocacy of Jewish emigration rights from the Soviet Union and for his Jackson-Vanik Amendment (1974), which affected trade relations for communist-bloc countries that restricted human rights. The crucial turning point came on the last day of 1991with the demise of the Soviet Union. Thousands of Jews were finally allowed to leave, but many others were still denied exit visas for months or years and sometimes, decades.
Coincidentally, Michal and I made Aliyah to Israel at the same time as the largest influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union did in the early 1990s. We were practically the only non-Russians in our ulpan class, the half-year crash program to learn Hebrew that all Israeli immigrants were offered. (All the Russians learned the language relatively quickly because it was necessary to get work in their fields and Hebrew and Russia are similar grammatically. We’re still working at it.)
While Pam’s 360-page book isn’t easy reading, it certainly is fascinating and very informative. I can’t help but say that women (and to a lesser degree, men) who devoted themselves to the task of helping Jews escape Russia did incredible and taxing work, sometimes, or maybe often, at the expense of their own families. They toiled to raise awareness of the refuseniks’ plight, to raise funds to publicize their conditions, to inform and receive help from local, state, and national politicians. They spent hours at home, in an office, on the phone, advocating the cause. They traveled to the Soviet Union and encouraged others to do so, to support the refuseniks and bring them Jewish-related information. Later, they attended innumerable meetings and conferences of a diplomatic nature in Russian and other countries, to keep pressure on Russia and the many newly independent, former Soviet satellites. Frankly, it’s astounding that Pam, and others like her and her husband Lenny, were able to do all this work and still have enough time to raise a fine family.
Following are just a few of the insights from “Hidden Heroes.”
I was not so surprised to learn that the volunteers working so hard to help the refuseniks received little help from the Jewish establishment. By that I mean the leaders of the established Jewish organizations who had their own membership lists, their own agendas, their own prejudices, and basically didn’t like the new kids on the block (the newly formed groups like, but not only, the UCSJ -Union of Councils for Soviet Jews), who were pursuing their own agenda. The “old guard” didn’t have much time or patience for this new task. Pam points to the similar attitude of the establishment Jewish leaders’ indifference to the Zionist cause and to the dire need to rescue Europeans Jews in the 1930s and 1940s.
Then there was the similar lack of cooperation with, and help from Lishka, the Israeli organization tasked with bringing refuseniks to Israel. It brought in small numbers of refuseniks, as opposed to their much larger emigration to the US. As a matter of fact, Israel was even hesitant in providing the required number of immigration permits to the refuseniks, a maddening occurrence. There was actual antagonism of sorts against the American and English groups working on behalf of the refuseniks!
But by the late 1980s the Americans were cozying up to the PLO and the Palestinians at the same time that Israel had decided that it needed an influx of well-educated Soviet Jews. The American processing of refugees was temporarily halted and wholesale approvals for Jews to enter the US were subjected to bureaucratic assessments of “proof of persecution.” Simultaneously, Israel was lowering barriers, expecting to reverse the 90% choice of emigration to the US over emigration to Israel. This reversal was fortuitous, given the incredible boost to Israel’s economic, military, and social fabric.
Here is an example of the ingenuity that the UCSJ displayed when there was a sort of media euphoria over the supposed reforms in the USSR during the late 1980s. Of all things, the Soviets in 1988 proposed to have a human rights conference in Moscow in 1991 – a “ludicrous contradiction!” According to Pam, this meeting would, “anoint the Kremlin with credibility even as it cracked down on dissent.” What to do?
A member of the UCSJ board came up with a startling idea, for their organization to have a human rights conference in Moscow ahead of the Russian event. The Russians had been continuously abusing rights all along, making the board members persona non grata there. With this proposal to hold a UCSJ conference in Moscow, the Russians would practically be forced to allow human rights activities which they otherwise would never countenance. It was either, allow the conference or be outed as total hypocrites unworthy of hosting their proposed human rights conference. In the end, the Russians were outsmarted and the pro-refusenik event was successful, but not without a few last minute triumphs over Soviet adversity.
I’ve left out many of the stratagems which Pam and the incredible UCSJ team used to fight the Soviet, and post-Soviet, juggernaut. They and other, similar groups, left no stone unturned to apply pressure on governments, friends or foes, to sustain the flow of Jews out of the former Soviet Union to the US and to Israel. The sheer volume of letters, phone calls, and messages to the refuseniks is astounding, especially considering the obstructions that were put in the way. The petitions and suggestions to politicians, from local to national and international, never stopped. Attending the necessary local, national, and international meetings and conferences necessitated a tremendous expenditure of energy and money for volunteers who were unpaid. (Of course, there were some professionals involved who drew salaries, probably not commensurate with their herculean efforts.)
Reading “Hidden Heroes” includes details which are essential to give readers a picture of what it was like on the front lines of the effort to rescue Jews eventual oblivion in their native lands. They, and we, owe a debt of gratitude to the inspired volunteers who brought about the freedom of literally millions of Jews trapped in Russia and other post-Soviet countries.
I heartily recommend “Hidden Heroes” to refresh your recollections of this gargantuan effort, or to belatedly learn about it from a participant who played a major role. Not only that – Pam and her family eventually moved to Israel from the Chicago area and dramatically changed their outlook and lifestyle. Volunteering does have its rewards!