All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (62 page)

David arrived within minutes and we went into the street to talk. “Watch out for our guardian angels,” he murmured. “There are six of them today.” I gave him a brief report. He thought for a moment, then announced: “Michel has nothing to fear, but you do. I’ll see what we can do.” He knew we were scheduled to leave Moscow the next day on separate flights to Paris. I was taking the morning Aeroflot flight, Michel the afternoon Air France flight. “Tomorrow is a long way off,” David said. He made a call from a phone booth, issued brief instructions, and came back to my room with me. We chatted about this and that: the magnificence of Moscow’s theater, museums, even the subway. A quarter of an hour later there was a knock on the door. Michel and I started, but David was calm. He opened it, and two men walked in. I had seen them before—probably Israeli security agents. “Get your things ready,” David whispered. “You’ll spend the night at the
embassy and tomorrow morning we’ll take you to the airport. It’ll be safer that way.” I was ready in three minutes. I said goodbye to Michel: “If anything happens to me …” He told me not to be a fool, but I could see that he, too, was worried. I could tell from the way he sucked at his pipe. My room had been paid for in advance through Intourist, so we left without stopping at the desk. Two KGB vehicles followed us to the embassy quarter. “Stepped-up surveillance,” David commented. By then it was four or five o’clock in the afternoon.

I was angry with myself for having brought the book. But it had just been published, and the temptation had been too strong. Now I would have to pay for it. On David’s advice I phoned several friends abroad to let those monitoring the lines know that my arrest would not pass unnoticed. “If you don’t see me tomorrow, call
Le Monde
and Mauriac,” I told Ephraim. “You might have to get in touch with the
Times
tomorrow,” I told Meir, “and with Senator Javits.” I called Marion but chose not to worry her. “I might have to extend my stay,” I said.

David’s two men showed up at seven in the morning. “Something’s going on outside,” they told us. I gulped down a cup of scalding coffee, and David gave his people instructions: “Don’t let him out of your sight until he boards.” He corrected himself: “No, until the plane takes off.”

Outside, the street seemed quiet and there was no suspicious activity. Still, there were the same KGB vehicles as the day before. I told myself it was going to be all right. Maybe the secret police had simply decided to tighten surveillance of foreigners this week. The trip to the airport was uneventful. A clerk at the Intourist counter even smiled at me. When I checked my suitcase with Aeroflot, a friendly young woman stamped my ticket, issued me a seat number, and wished me bon voyage. But my nerves were on edge as I lined up at passport control. It was a long, slow-moving queue. A Frenchman behind me was reading
L’Humanité
, the Communist paper. In an effort to relax, I spoke to him. He was an engineer, a Communist Party member on his way home from North Korea. He was annoyed because he had lost his new raincoat, but what the hell, some North Korean comrade would find it, and we had to help those gallant fighters for peace in North Korea, didn’t we? I couldn’t tell if he was serious. Finally, I reached passport control. The official took his time, consulted documents, looked me over, stared. I expected him to pick up the phone or push a button to inform his superiors that they could come and get the enemy of the people. But to my surprise, he closed my passport and handed it back
to me. Turning to the two Israelis standing near me, I said, “See? No problem. You can go now.” One of them phoned David and came back shaking his head. “We will stay with you until the plane takes off,” he said.

They had special permits letting them through the checkpoints. Once we reached the waiting room, I felt safe; surely they weren’t going to arrest me in front of all these foreigners. Besides which, boarding was about to begin. The Aeroflot crew had arrived. There were two final checks at the end of the ramp: An Intourist stewardess on the right took my boarding card, an officer on the left examined my passport. The young woman motioned to me to board, but at the same instant the officer shouted something. Suddenly things moved quickly. Before I realized what was happening, the two Israelis were at my side. One of them took my ticket while the other snatched my passport out of the officer’s hand. I felt myself being lifted like a package. They ran, and so did I, amid whistles and shouted orders. I don’t know how we managed to jostle our way through all the gates and barriers, but we jumped into the embassy car and took off. Why the police didn’t stop us, I don’t know. I was too stunned to try to understand, too dazed to think about it. The Israeli behind the wheel drove as if he were back home in Tel Aviv. I would worry about that later. In a moment we were on embassy grounds. “Do you believe me now?” David said as he opened the car door for me. Walking up to his office, I suddenly remembered my suitcase, which must have left for Paris. How was I going to get it back? David shook his head in disbelief: “Is that what you’re worried about? Don’t you understand what trouble you’re in?” Then he reassured me: I would be all right here. He emphasized the “here.” By then I was in a cold sweat. How long did he think they would keep me, I asked, remembering Cardinal Mind-szenty, who lived in the American embassy in Budapest for years.

David went into an adjoining room and returned some fifteen minutes later. He had contacted his “sources,” and things looked bad. “They” were determined to arrest me. I already saw myself in a cell in the Lyubianka Prison, but David seemed calm. “As long as you don’t fall into their hands, my boy, there’s hope.” He advised me to be patient and let him handle the situation. I was happy enough to let him handle it, but being patient was a different story. I couldn’t sit still. I became obsessed with the idea that I would be stuck here for a week, a month, or—who knows?—all my life.

To make things worse, there was a pompous young diplomat
named Yoram staying at the embassy who was determined to give us the “benefit” of his “ideas” and advice. I had to get back to Paris, if only to be rid of him. I sent frantic appeals to Meir and Ephraim. Mauriac was informed. I was later told that he had interceded with General de Gaulle. David mobilized his American and European colleagues and called in IOUs with some of his contacts within the Communist bureaucracy. But the hours dragged on, the clock refusing to budge.

I spent three days and nights at the embassy before getting the signal to leave. David never told me how he managed it, and I made no real effort to find out, though the journalist in me would have loved to know. The important thing was to get out of Moscow, to find freedom again.

Accompanied by my two Israeli bodyguards, I returned to the airport. Everything went smoothly. The Intourist and Aeroflot employees greeted me amiably. I was told my suitcase was waiting for me in Paris. There was no problem at passport control. The other passengers were already on board. I shook hands with my guardian angels. The young Intourist hostess invited me to go aboard, the officer wished me a pleasant flight.

The plane was half empty. I had the whole first-class section to myself. Suddenly I noticed the Communist engineer returning from North Korea. He had been close to boarding—why hadn’t he left three days ago? When I said hello, he looked at me with hostility and snapped, “Go away! Go away or I’ll call the captain!” Perplexed and offended, I went back to my seat, wondering what I had done to make him so angry. He gave me the answer at our stopover in Copenhagen. He came up to me in the waiting room, his face a deep red, and said: “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care to know, but on account of you I spent three most unpleasant days and nights in the police station being interrogated. Even my party card didn’t help. They wanted to know where and when I first met you, whether I was your accomplice, and whether a certain Michel Salomon was a friend of mine. They released me only this morning.” I apologized profusely and offered to buy him a drink. He glared at me. “I don’t drink with people who slander the Soviet Union,” he said.

I arrived in Paris just in time for the annual conference of French Jewish intellectuals organized by Jean Halpérin and André Neher under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress. Rather than speak on that year’s designated topic (God and…),! recounted my experiences
and impressions while in Moscow: the clandestine meetings, the celebration of Simchat Torah, the desperate calls for help from these Jews I found so admirable in their defiance.

The next day I returned to the subject during the popular television program “Lectures pour tous.” Its normally unflappable host, Pierre Dumayet, seemed shaken and incredulous. He didn’t say so, but I sensed it in his questions, and I could understand why. He could not believe that fifty years after the Communist revolution there were still Jews in the Soviet Union devoted to their Jewishness. I tried to explain it, but confronted, as I was, by a man of secular, rationalist logic, especially of the French type, I found it a difficult task.

As I walked into my hotel later, the phone rang. It was Yaakov Herzog, secretary to Levi Eshkol, in Paris on an official visit. “The prime minister would like to see you,” he said. What about? “He’ll tell you himself.” We made an appointment for Saturday afternoon, at the Bristol. As usual, I arrived early. “He’s in a meeting,” Herzog told me, “and he’ll be late. He asks you to excuse him.” But the prime minister wasn’t late. At the appointed hour I was ushered into the suite that served as his office.

Years later my friend, the former ambassador of Israel Emile Najar, recalled: “Eshkol was more Jewish than Israeli. Imagine: In 1966 he summoned all his European ambassadors to Paris. The meeting had a full agenda, but in the middle of the discussion he stood and asked to be excused. He had a meeting with ‘some Jew’ who had come to talk about the fate of Soviet Jews.” At that time Emile didn’t know I was that Jew.

Eshkol bombarded me with questions: How badly were the Jews suffering? Did they still live in fear? Did they have hope? Was it true they wanted to remain Jewish? I reported in detail. He interrupted frequently. Was I absolutely sure there were many young Jews who wanted to return to Judaism? Had I really seen them dancing on the night of Simchat Torah? Was it true thousands of people had come out into the streets? As I answered his questions, he stood from time to time and paced back and forth, hands behind his back, punctuating his march with exclamations: “Incredible! After fifty years of Communist oppression …” After nearly two hours, a secretary came in and whispered something to him. “Let them wait,” the prime minister replied, before launching into more questions. It was nearly dinnertime when he escorted me to the door. “One last thing,” Eshkol said. “Tell me, what do you think we can do for them, apart from what we’re already
doing?” I was about to suggest a more determined political campaign, a push for greater press coverage, more critical speeches at the UN. But I knew there were limits to what he could do, and to ask for too much made no sense. So I decided to be realistic. “While I was there,” I said, “I often listened to Israeli radio broadcasts aimed at Soviet Jews. These broadcasts are listened to religiously.” I told him I thought the content and tone of these programs needed to be changed. They picture Israel as too perfect, as though there were no difficulties in adapting, as though everyone were always happy. What if the gates were someday opened and masses of Soviet Jews immigrated to Israel? They would most certainly be disappointed. Eshkol listened intently. “What do you think we should do?” he asked. “Tell the truth,” I replied, “even if it’s unpleasant.” He looked at me sadly and said, “You and I both know that the gates will not open anytime soon. The Soviet Jews will stay where they are. Why sadden them? At least let them dream.”

Levi Eshkol died before he could see the realization of the dream. He was a generous and good man. Golda Meir succeeded him as the first waves of Soviet Jews began arriving in Israel.

Upon returning to the United States I threw myself into the struggle for Soviet Jews. Both here and in France my testimony at last brought some reaction, especially among young people, but little action, official or otherwise. Abraham Joshua Heschel and I pleaded with audiences in the United States and Canada. Disappointed by the sparse attendance of adults, I often began by asking high school students, “Where are your parents? Why didn’t they come with you? Next time make them come too!”

Wherever we went, we found that only the young responded. How could we awaken the powerful Jewish communities? I wrote article after article in the
Forverts, Yedioth
, and
Hadassah
magazine, circulated appeals and petitions, rushed from demonstration to demonstration and convention to convention: rabbinical associations in Toronto, Miami, and New Jersey, institutes and conferences of philanthropic groups. I accepted all radio, television, and press interviews on the subject. But nothing happened, and like Meir and Ephraim, I felt frustrated. We had to do something else, we had to do more.

Gershon Swet, of Russian origin and dean of correspondents for Israeli newspapers, proposed that I meet with several influential Jewish intellectuals at his home. I told them of the complacency and silence of the old people and the courage and defiance of the young. I told them how miraculous it seemed to discover so many Jews defying
the most feared regime on earth in order to remain Jewish. Imagine, I said, a course in Talmud in Moscow.

They asked questions, and I replied as best I could. One man in particular stood out. I was struck by the combination of irony and kindness in his blue eyes. He asked for details about the Talmud course in Moscow: the number of participants, their ages, the length of the session, the treatise they studied, the commentaries they used. Fortunately, I recalled every detail of my visit to the Moscow synagogue.

When the host offered us tea, I took the opportunity to inquire about the man who had posed all those questions. “Don’t you know him?” he asked, surprised. “That’s Dr. Saul Lieberman.” So this was the man whose landmark work on the Jerusalem Talmud I had studied and so admired. Just then the master came over to where we were standing, hand extended. He asked more questions. “Tell me the truth,” he said in a low voice so that no one else could hear. “Is it true you studied the tractate of Sanhedrin in what you call the Moscow yeshiva?” I told him it was true, except it wasn’t really a yeshiva. “Are you certain it was really the Talmud?” I was. “You’re interested in the Talmud, then?” Yes. “Since when?” Since childhood. Gershon Swet intervened: “You ought to come to one of his lectures at the 92nd Street Y.” Lieberman smiled: “Oh, you teach?” Intimidated, wishing to drop the subject, I replied: “Yes, but it’s not important.” But Lieberman would not let it go. “What do you teach?” A little of everything, I said, but really, it’s not important. “Still, what are you going to talk about in your next session?” I swallowed hard and murmured that I would deal with, well, a Talmudic subject. “Really! In that case, I’ll be there.” He called his wife, Judith, over, introduced us, and asked her to make a note of the date of my lecture. Judith took me aside and politely told me not to count on their showing up. Her husband would probably discover he was otherwise engaged that evening.