The Soviet Jewish Experience

“I was in high school in Spokane in the early ‘70s, and I remember thinking that this could be the next Holocaust,” says Beth Huppin, who now works at Jewish Family Service in Seattle. “But what could we do from Spokane? Then we found out a Soviet delegation would be coming for the World’s Fair, and we thought, we’re going to tell them, ‘Let our people go!’

“There was a rule that you couldn’t have any posters or signs on the exhibit grounds. So we put our message on T-shirts. We walked in the front door and out the back door and back in the front door in circles, and the Soviets thought there were hundreds of us! That was basically my job that summer: to go through the exhibit in my T-shirt every day as many times as I could.”

Later, Beth was one of many students who went to the USSR to report on the treatment of Refuseniks. “In Vinnytsia, the first town we got to in the Ukraine, it was Chanukah. We knocked on the door, and this guy answered, and he said, ‘Shalom.’ He showed us, in his closet, a hatchet. There’d been a pogrom in the next village, and he wanted to be able to protect his family. This was the kind of fear that people were living with. They couldn’t buy a menorah, so he had a piece of wood with coins on it, and he had candles, but he didn’t know the blessings, so we taught them the blessings.

“When I called home, the first thing I said to my dad was, ‘Tell grandpa, thank you for leaving.’ They wouldn’t let these people go because if they let the Jews out, everyone would want to leave. And that’s exactly what happened. Nobody wants to live under oppression. Humans want to be free.”

Once the doors opened for Jewish emigration in 1988, Jewish
Family Service took the lead in relocating Refuseniks in
Washington State. Carol Benedick was the first caseworker JFS
hired to help the immigrants get settled in their new homes.

“I didn’t grow up Jewish, so I wasn’t aware what was going on
with Jews in the Soviet Union,” Carol recalls. “I was at UW
getting my Master’s degree [in International Studies, with an
emphasis on the USSR] and I saw an announcement that Jewish
Family Service was looking for someone who spoke Russian,
because the floodgates had just started opening.

“The immigrants all had family here. It might not have been close family, but it was family, and they sponsored them. They were very motivated. They were very educated. They were doctors and dentists and computer specialists. Their skills didn’t always translate here, so we started many skilled workers as child care employees or janitors. Many of them took classes here and moved up quickly, but it was a long process. They sacrificed their careers for their families. And they knew it, and that’s okay.”

Because of the discrimination Jews faced in the USSR, many of the immigrants had an ambivalent relationship toward their religion, though all of them strongly identified as Jews. “Most of them had lived their lives wishing that they could assimilate in the Soviet Union,” says Carol, “but the Soviets would not allow them to assimilate. Their Soviet passport had a line for nationality, and theirs said, Jew. There were some who came to the United States who loved Judaism and wanted to learn more about it, and it was wonderful to have this religious freedom, but most did not. For them, it was finally the freedom to assimilate.”

University of Washington professor Gregory Korshin emigrated from the USSR to the United States in 1991, from the city of Kazan, capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, with his wife Bella and their two sons, ages twelve and five. The idea of emigrating was with Gregory from an early age, long before such a thing was possible. “When I was a student in high school or at the university, I had already started thinking the Soviet Union was not the place for me. I felt strongly about being Jewish and getting out. I was a little bit of a closeted Refusenik, but it was never actionable, just because of the circumstances.”

By Soviet standards, the Korshins had a middle-class existence in a region that was relatively tolerant of Jews, if not Judaism. “There were no synagogues open in my time,” says Gregory. “There was no Jewish life in our time, until 1986, 1987. Jewish things were just forbidden. Actually, I taught myself Hebrew, and I was the first teacher of Hebrew in Kazan in over two generations. I had always wanted to learn it, but there was no sources to learn. And then suddenly I found a photocopy of a textbook in Hebrew, and I taught myself within a few months and then started teaching others. Many people were in great love with Israel then, and we were also considering our options.”

Eventually, the option of immigrating to America opened up, but at a time of personal strife. “My first experience with Judaism [as a religion] was when my father suddenly died; it was two months before we emigrated. I already was fluent in Hebrew; we were absolutely Jewish, but religion was not part of being Jewish. It was prohibited. Of course, there were semi-secret places where old Jews would get together for a minyan. So when my father died, I felt I should do something. For Americans, yes, being Jewish means it’s a religious aspect. For us, it’s more ethnic; more tribal, I would say. Kind of positively speaking. Being in the same boat. It was really people who could trust each other.”

Mikhail Shmidt emigrated from Moscow to the United States in 1990, stopping first in New York, where he worked as a freelance violinist before moving to Seattle to accept a position with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in 1991.

“I was born in Moscow, and not to a musician’s family. My mother
was a teacher, and my father was an engineer. An average Russian Jewish family. And it was just accidentally discovered that I
have musical talent. My parents were friends with a concert pianist. He heard me singing and said why don’t you take him to audition at this very famous, very difficult to get into music school, because he’s got perfect pitch.”

How did he choose the violin? “Actually, it wasn’t my decision. Once you get into this Soviet Russian system of art education, you get into some huge, well-oiled machine. And then wheels start to turn. They’ll look at your hands and say, ‘Violin!’ You don’t have any choice. You just say, ‘Okay, violin it is.’ And then, if you’re not too good, in four years they’ll kick you out. Or it’s almost like a joke: ‘Okay, you’re not very good at the violin, maybe percussion?”

But he was very good at the violin. He went on to the prestigious Gnessin Institute, then played in the State Symphony Orchestra and with the Moscow Radio String Quartet. “That experience,” with the Radio String Quartet, “actually pushed me towards emigration. They didn’t normally actually take Jews. I had to go to the boss who told me that as a Jew I have to understand what kind of responsibility I have. I’m doing my job; what’s that got to do with my being Jewish? It was constant; every day you would encounter it.”

So he decided to emigrate. “We all knew what steps we had to take to get out of that place. On a certain day you would go to the Dutch embassy, because the Dutch embassy represented Israel. So you go there, you leave your name and say we’re interested, and you wait. And you just hope that nobody is stealing your mail to prevent you from receiving that first paper, which was an invitation from some mysterious Uncle Chaim from Tel Aviv who
wants to reunite with his beloved nephew. Some people have a real relative, but a lot of people didn’t. So it was this game. The Soviet government knew that it was completely fake. Jews were always pawns in this geopolitical game.”

Freed of such games, in the United States he has found a deeper connection with Judaism. “When our son was born, that was a huge thing. We joined the temple, and eventually he went through the bar mitzvah. I still consider myself pretty much secular, but we never miss the High Holidays. I feel very proud of who I am.”

Dr. Edward A. Stern, z"l was a physicist and professor at the University of Washington who advocated for the refuseniks, even visiting the USSR to help and learn from them directly.

In our exhibit "Dr. Edward A. Stern: Scientist & Activist," the section "A Voice for Peace and the Oppressed" discusses his work for Soviet Jewry in greater detail. 

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Here is the transcript from a piece of Herman Kleiner Oral History: 

"...from '89 to 1995 or so, we were able to aid in the resettlement of some 33 Jewish families from the former Soviet Union. In the Tacoma Jewish community, we probably spent $125,000 to resettle these folks. We worked with the Jewish Family Service in Seattle. We secured their apartment before they came. We stocked the refrigerator. We purchased used tables, chairs, everything. And when they came, we would pick them up at the plane. We would bring them from the plane. They had just arrived from Moscow. We would record everything on a videotape and bring them to their apartment. It was absolutely one of the most wondrous parts of our lives."

"I have cousins [Zoya Gisburg Garburg and her family] in Israel, now in Kiryat Biyalik for for many years in Kiryat Shmona, who came to Israel in 1991. My father's first cousin - Zoya's father - and his wife visited Seattle in 1989, but my extended family could not get them visas to come to the US, so they went to Israel. They have been hard-working, raised two daughters, and now have 5 grandchildren and another on the way.

I found out on a recent trip that they credit coming to Israel with Zoya and her daughter being alive. They were close to Chernobyl and have serious thyroid problems, which were only treated seriously after their arrival in Israel...

I visited refuseniks in May of 1989, with Judy Balint giving us names of people to visit. It was a few months after Julie Morris of Spokane had gone. She was visibly followed to shake her up, though I was not."

Zoya and her older daughter, Gala Garburg, received special medical treatment in Israel because of what they had suffered by being close to Chernobyl. Gala is a nurse working on her Ph D, married with three children. The younger daughter, Ola, is married with two sons and a daughter on the way. Both daughters live in Harish. Zoya and Boris moved to Kiryat Bialik several years ago from Kiryat Shmona, where Boris worked for Teva Pharmaceuticals and Zoya worked at Hamashbir.

Yosef was my father's [Sid Nelson] first cousin, and also first cousin to his sisters Sara Efron and Gussie Stusser, both very active in the Seattle Jewish community.