Rabbi Aids Mission of Hope for 6 Soviet Cancer Patients

When a group of U.S. senators placed a call from Capitol Hill to Moscow earlier this month, six cancer patients hoping to leave the Soviet Union for treatment in the United States were waiting for the phone to ring, thanks in part to an Orange County rabbi.

Rabbi Allen Krause of Temple Beth El in Laguna Niguel had traveled to the Soviet Union with a message from an American support organization to one of the cancer victims, Tatyana Haifets Bogomolny, to assemble the group of patients at her apartment at 7 p.m. her time on Sept. 11.

In Washington, eight senators, including California’s Republican Pete Wilson and Democrat Alan Cranston, had joined American cancer specialists to launch a bipartisan effort to enable the six Soviets to come to the United States for experimental treatment not available in the Soviet Union, and to join their relatives already in this country.

After the call, the senators sent a letter to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev asking that the six be permitted to emigrate, but they have not received a response.

Bogomolny underwent a single mastectomy for breast cancer in late 1985 and, since then, the disease has spread. Married to Vinyamin Bogomolny--dubbed the “Most Patient Refusenik” by the Guinness Book of World Records for his two-decade effort to leave the Soviet Union--the 47-year-old woman has been trying for the past six years to join her father and sister in San Francisco. Among those hoping to leave with her is a 7-year-old boy who has leukemia.

Krause, 47, went to the Soviet Union for two weeks on behalf of the Pacific Assn. of Reform Rabbis, which paid for a portion of his trip, and the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews, one of the most active groups supporting emigration efforts. He went with Rabbi Steve Chester of Stockton. Most of Krause’s trip was paid for by the Orange County Jewish Federation.

All the information given to Krause and Chester--names, addresses, telephone numbers, directions and data to be exchanged--was separately coded by the rabbis, who traveled on tourist visas.

The rabbis’ goal was to contact and offer support to 20 to 30 families, many dependents of jailed dissidents, in Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa and Kharkov. Because the Soviets were informed of their mission, Krause said, a number of the people they were supposed to contact failed to meet them, and they were only able to reach 15 families, including Bogomolny and her cancer support group.

Tells of Warning

“Apparently the KGB knew we were coming well in advance,” Krause said. The rabbis said that in the city of Kharkov they were interrogated by a uniformed woman who warned them that if they continued to visit “undesirable people” their visas would be revoked. Although Krause and Chester believed that they were being followed, they were not prevented from meeting the dissidents they could locate, nor were they expelled.

Although not explicitly political, Bogomolny’s support group was considered sinister by the Soviets, Krause said, “because any group is a threat to them.”

Some conversations with the dissidents were conducted in spoken English or in writing, on a child’s erasable Magic Slate. On one occasion, an entire evening was spent speaking Hebrew, which the family had taught itself.

Another man spoke freely, Krause said. “They’ve (Soviet authorities) been bugging me for so long,” the man told him, “I don’t care. I don’t have any secrets.”

In addition to exchanging information with the dissidents, Krause said, “We were able to provide certain material things to these people that I think will be helpful to them.” Most asked for books dealing with Jewish history and culture, he said.

Krause said he was extremely impressed with the individual dissidents, many of whom were “literally risking being sent to Siberia to observe their religion,” in contrast to “some Jews right here in Orange County who are letting Judaism just wither away on the vine.”