Zhirinovsky

* Re “Records Show Zhirinovsky Had a Jewish Name,” April 4:

It’s just amazing--exactly in the same year, 1945, when Hitler died, a man of Jewish heritage was born in the former Soviet Union who is now seen as a new Hitler.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian ultranationalist leader, is my age. Like Zhirinovsky, I came to Moscow from a Russian province after graduating from high school and like him I was admitted to Moscow State University. I see that we both were preoccupied by the same headache: His middle name has been Volf; mine, Aron. It was suggested that I change my middle name for a bribe of 500 rubles. No doubt, the same manipulation with a last name was much more expensive. It’s hard to imagine what it cost Zhirinovsky to give up such an “attractive” (in Russia) name as Eidelshtein.

Zhirinovsky did not change his name because he was going to enter Moscow State University. While Jews were targeted in the course of admission to this prestigious college, I was not the only student officially listed as a Jew; there were dozens of motivated fellows with the same mark on their IDs. Zhirinovsky has changed his name and keeps his origin guarded because he has conceived an incorrigible hatred for Jews--a hatred since his childhood, as Hitler had.

VLADIMIR BOGORAD

Van Nuys