Ailing Jewish ‘Refusenik’ Is Flown to U.S.

Soviet “refusenik” David Goldfarb, who resisted KGB secret police pressure two years ago to frame U.S. journalist Nicholas Daniloff, was released suddenly Thursday by Soviet officials and flown to the United States.

Goldfarb and his wife, Cecilia, flew from Moscow aboard the private jet of industrialist Armand Hammer, who helped arrange the Soviet dissident’s release by personally lobbying high-ranking officials, including Anatoly F. Dobrynin, the former Soviet ambassador to the United States.

In the glare of floodlights at Newark International Airport, Goldfarb was taken on a stretcher from the white Boeing 727 jet, then wheeled, sitting, to microphones set up alongside the taxiway.

“Yesterday, a miracle happened,” said the 68-year-old Goldfarb, who suffers from heart problems and diabetes. “Dr. Hammer came to my Moscow hospital and said he would take me to the United States.

“Since Dr. Hammer said I was coming to the United States, I didn’t sleep all night,” said Goldfarb, whose son, Alexander, an assistant professor at Columbia University, translated his remarks into English. The younger Goldfarb came to the United States 11 years ago.

Goldfarb, a frail and gray-haired microbiologist, is one of the most prominent Soviet refuseniks--the term for Soviet citizens, primarily Jews, who have been refused permission to emigrate to Israel. In 1984, after waiting for three years, Goldfarb was about to leave for Israel when his visa was rescinded, apparently because he refused to go along with efforts to frame Daniloff on espionage charges.

Goldfarb, who lost a leg during the World War II battle of Stalingrad, thanked his Moscow doctors for saving his remaining leg. But he pointed out that, despite the happy conclusion to his quest to emigrate, his family is still not intact.

“There is no complete happiness without misfortune,” he added, “and there is no luck without problems. The problem is I left behind in Moscow my daughter and her family.”

Cardiovascular Difficulties

After the brief news conference, Goldfarb was taken by ambulance to New York’s Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he will be evaluated by physicians. A doctor who examined him at the airport said Goldfarb had multiple medical problems, including cardiovascular difficulties and diabetes.

However, Goldfarb told friends who greeted him at the airport, including Daniloff, that he felt “good.”

On the flight, Goldfarb drank champagne and watched the movie “My Fair Lady” while Hammer made telephone calls to reporters in the United States to alert them to the dissident’s arrival.

Hammer, chairman of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp., sought to link Goldfarb’s arrival in the United States with what he described as a warmer post-summit climate between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

“The mini-summit left a good feeling between Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev,” said Hammer, who predicted the Soviet Union would release more Jews who wish to emigrate.

The industrialist said that without Gorbachev’s approval, “this wouldn’t have happened.”

Hammer, who was visiting the Soviet Union for a showing of his art collection, said that on Wednesday, he had asked Dobrynin, now a member of the Communist Party Central Committee’s Secretariat, “if I could take Dr. Goldfarb with me” back to the United States.

Dobrynin called back a few hours later. “He said, ‘Permission granted, provided the doctors let him go,’ ” Hammer related.

‘Miraculous Recovery’

Hammer then traveled immediately to the Vishnezsky Institute for Surgery, where he met with the institution’s director and Goldfarb’s attending physician. The Soviet doctors said that Goldfarb had made a “miraculous recovery” in the last week.

“Previously, there was concern he would lose his leg to gangrene, but while two toes had been removed, his leg is intact and the gangrene abated,” Hammer said.

“They brought me to see Dr. Goldfarb, who looked very well. He said he would go to the U.S. only if his wife could join him. I then called on his wife at their apartment and told her to get ready, which she did.”

Hammer said that at 10 p.m. Wednesday, he phoned Dobrynin at his country home. “He told me that Mrs. Goldfarb could leave as well.”

In Moscow, Goldfarb’s daughter, Olga, said she was delighted and stunned by the development. “I know I sound a little bit crazy, but this was all so quick,” she told the Associated Press. “We said farewell and it was very emotional. Now we’re just sitting here and thinking what will happen next.”

A State Department spokesman, Pete Martinez, said, “We welcome the resolution of this case.”

Goldfarb was met at the Newark airport by his son; his sister, Nina Shurkovich, of Rockville, Md. and by Daniloff and his wife, Ruth.

His son went to the superpower summit last weekend in Iceland to appeal for the release of his parents. The younger Goldfarb also had appealed for Hammer’s help, and in mid-September the industrialist called him and said he was cautiously optimistic that his parents would be freed.

The next contact with Hammer came on Thursday. “I had no other communication from him until he called from the plane,” the younger Goldfarb said.

After Daniloff’s arrest in Moscow on Aug. 30, the younger Goldfarb accused the Soviet secret police of trying in April, 1984, to persuade his father to hand Daniloff incriminating documents. “My father rejected the proposal out of hand,” Alexander Goldfarb said.

He said his father had been informed by the KGB, the Soviet secret police, that he and his family would be permitted to emigrate to Israel if he agreed to the proposition to frame Daniloff. When the elder Goldfarb refused, his visa was revoked, and he was accused of seeking to smuggle national security material out of the country. The accusation was later dropped, but Goldfarb still was denied permission to leave.

At the airport here, Daniloff, a U.S. News & World Report correspondent, confirmed the story and praised Goldfarb as “one of the most admirable men I have ever known.”

The elder Goldfarb was understood to be on a list of Jewish “refuseniks” submitted by Secretary of State George P. Shultz to Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze during negotiations over Daniloff.

Yuri Orlov, a physicist and prominent human rights activist, also was on the list, although he is not Jewish. Orlov was freed two weeks ago as part of the deal that liberated Daniloff from Moscow and expelled Gennady F. Zakharov, a Soviet employee at the U.N. Secretariat accused of spying, from the United States.

Set Summit Stage

The simultaneous releases of Daniloff and Zakharov set the stage for the summit meeting last weekend.