Refusenik Family Adjusting to L. A. Life but Won’t Forget Plight of Soviet Jews

Simeon Katz, a seismologist who battled the Soviet bureaucracy for eight years before he was allowed to emigrate last month, arrived in Los Angeles on the eve of the biggest earthquake of his life.

The quake and its aftershocks brought a familiar feeling of helplessness to the Katz family.

“I felt very small,” said Katz’s wife, Vera, a computer engineer. “I could understand everything that was happening and do nothing about it. Just like life in the Soviet Union.”

The earthquake was not the only surprise in store for Katz, who was beaten on a Moscow street and barred from publishing his research after he and his family applied to leave the Soviet Union in 1979.

His wife was fired and his salary was cut in half after they declared their intention to emigrate, which is seen by Soviet officials as near-treason.

They staged a brief hunger strike and were threatened with spending many more years in the Soviet Union only days before authorities changed their minds and granted an exit visa in July. They and their son and daughter arrived in Los Angeles on Sept. 28 after a short stay in Vienna.

Katz, 50, begins teaching at USC in January. Meanwhile, he will write a textbook on his specialty, which involves the mathematics of finding underground oil and gas deposits.

Surprising Impressions

Newly moved into an apartment in the Pico-Robertson district, the Katzes have been surprised by early impressions of life in the United States, from the poverty of areas near the USC campus to the quickness with which the university bureaucracy gave him a private office and promised a computer.

“This would have been a long, drawn-out process in the Soviet Union,” said Katz, who has been named a visiting professor at USC’s geology department. “Even if it was practically possible to get a computer, it takes a year or two to get one, and you should include it in the next year’s plan. Here, they say it will take two or three weeks.”

Vera Katz, amused at the American concept of a housewife as a “domestic engineer” said she hopes to find work in computers “before I get arteriosclerosis.”

But their main concern is the thousands of other Jews still seeking to leave the Soviet Union despite a flurry of exit visas granted to leading refuseniks whose plight was highlighted by supporters in the West.

“The Soviets wanted to get rid of the people who are constantly creating problems,” Katz said. “There’s going to be a meeting between (Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev and President Reagan now, and they want everything to look good in Russia and (have) nice relations with the American public.”

“I think all it means is that we have to pray it’s the beginning of a new policy toward Soviet Jewry,” said Havi Schindlin, a former staff member of the Soviet Jewry Commission in Los Angeles.

“It’s certainly a good beginning to let out the longstanding people who have been waiting 10 to 15 years to leave, and there are no more prisoners of conscience,” Schindlin said.

“But with the new generation, the Soviets will have a chance to build a new policy, more humane and caring, more respectful of what they (Soviet Jews) want to do, whether it’s to observe Judaism in the Soviet Union or join their people in Israel and elsewhere,” she said.

A Soviet law introduced in January has made it more difficult for first-time applicants to qualify for exit visas, since only those with parents or siblings abroad will be allowed to leave, Katz said.

“The real test will be after six months go by when most of the old refuseniks have left the country,” he said. “I suspect they’ll say everybody who wanted to leave already has left, but it will not be true.”

A spokesman for the National Conference on Soviet Jewry said about 380,000 people have taken the perilous first step toward emigration by asking for invitations from relatives abroad. Of these, 11,000 have been refused permission to emigrate.

Despite the recent issuing of visas for the Katz family and others who have been active in the struggle for Jews to leave the Soviet Union, the number of visas issued monthly has gone down since June, the spokesman said.

‘Do Not Forget’

“The Soviet officials must understand that people here do not forget the people in the Soviet Union,” said Vera Katz, who this summer was the host for an unauthorized conference of women refuseniks in the family’s Moscow apartment at the same time an officially sponsored international women’s conference was being held.

The action embarrassed Soviet authorities and led to the threat of many more years without a visa. The Katzes said they refused to call off the meeting, which was publicized in the West.

“There can be no compromises,” Vera Katz said. “Many people take steps in that direction and they suffer.”

The Katzes said they first decided to emigrate because opportunities are limited for Jews in scientific fields in the Soviet Union, especially for those who want to practice their religion, learn Hebrew or preserve Jewish culture.

While Katz and his wife had been relatively successful in their careers, they were concerned that the barriers would be even more difficult for their children, Alexander, 25, and Elena, 19. Alexander, known as Sasha, is now looking for work as a computer programmer and Elena, known as Lyena, is trying to improve her English in preparation for classes at USC.

Pressure to Speak

The Katzes also felt constant pressure from Soviet authorities to speak out in favor of a communist system that they did not believe in.

“I’m not an opponent of the communist ideology, but I’m not a supporter either,” Simeon Katz said. “Maybe it’s OK for the Russians, but I feel it’s not correct. The problem is that it’s a very militant ideology which will not accept anything different. There’s a constant pressure not just to accept the communist ideology but to express our personal support for it. And if you don’t do this, life becomes very difficult.”

The Katzes first applied to leave the Soviet Union in 1979, the year when more than 50,000 Jews were granted exit visas.

However, their timing was off. The deep freeze in U. S.-Soviet relations that followed the invasion of Afghanistan in December of that year saw the emigration figures drop dramatically.

During eight years of limbo, it was letters and phone calls from friends and supporters in the United States that kept their spirits up, Vera Katz said.

‘Something Inside Would Break’

“When our phone was silent for two or three weeks, something inside would break,” she said. “Maybe they forgot. If they (Soviet authorities) know that people here remember every name, maybe they will not stop the emigration.”

Having flown directly from Vienna, the Katzes were suffering from jet lag when they arrived at Los Angeles International Airport, where a small group of USC professors and others welcomed them with bread and salt and a blast on a long twisted ram’s horn, the traditional shofar blown on Jewish holidays.

Recruited for his post at USC after an attempt to deprive him and other refusenik scientists of their graduate degrees was publicized in the West, Katz has been spared the challenge of looking for work, at least for two years.

Friends found an apartment and donated furniture, and the new arrivals are getting acquainted with the American way of life, from frozen pizza and six brands of breakfast cereal atop their refrigerator to the challenges of getting around Los Angeles by bus. They are looking forward to a trip to Disneyland.

In contrast with Moscow, where private cars are still a luxury and public transportation is crowded but frequent, L. A. buses are pleasantly empty but distressingly infrequent, Simeon Katz said.

“I have seen very different regions,” he said. “Century City is very beautiful, and Beverly Hills is very beautiful, and then you go to the center of the city and it’s very different. There are very poor areas with people walking about aimlessly. But that was not new. I knew about such problems in the United States,” because poverty in the United States is a frequent theme of Soviet TV and newspaper reports.

Vera Katz said she was adjusting well until she visited a shoe shop. Remembering the long lines outside most Soviet shoe stores whenever decent merchandise was for sale, regardless of size or color, she said “I was surprised when the man asked what color and what height I wanted.

“I decided to be like a Western woman and asked for a pair of black, medium-heel shoes, and then he brought me one, and then more and more. I did not know what to get.”