Goldfarb’s Daughter Gets Kremlin’s OK to Visit Her Ailing Father in N.Y.

The daughter of David Goldfarb, a Soviet geneticist who emigrated last month, said Tuesday she has received permission only six days after applying to visit her ailing father in New York.

Olga Goldfarb said she had applied last Wednesday for an emergency visa to make a one-week visit to New York. The application was made the day her father had an operation to remove part of his left lung after U.S. doctors discovered he has cancer.

Goldfarb said authorities told her Tuesday she could collect her passport to travel abroad Thursday. She said she wanted to depart by Saturday.

In New York, her brother, Alexander Goldfarb, said Soviet permission for his sister to leave was remarkable because it was granted after only three business days after her application was submitted.

The visa is not valid for emigration and does not apply to her husband and their two children, he said.

Her parents left the Soviet Union on Oct. 16 in industrialist Armand Hammer’s private jet after Hammer had intervened on their behalf. Goldfarb, a friend of U.S. journalist Nicholas Daniloff, had spent several months in a hospital before he left Moscow.

Alexander Goldfarb, a professor at Columbia University in New York, claims his father was denied an exit visa in 1984 after refusing to help the KGB secret police frame Daniloff.

Daniloff was detained by KGB agents Aug. 30 and spent 13 days in jail and 17 more days restricted to the U.S. Embassy before being allowed to leave the Soviet Union. The Kremlin accused him of espionage.

Olga Goldfarb, a 34-year-old physician, applied in September for herself, her husband and their two daughters to emigrate.

She said they have received no answer but the approval of her emergency visa “is maybe a good sign generally, for all of us.”