There was no furniture in the roomeverything had been sold during the previous year to pay for food and rent. There was nothing left to sell. My first instinct was to offer them any money I had with me. just to enable them to survive. Yet they refused to accept anything. "We are already dead." they told me. They realized that their application for visas would never be approved. That they were condemned to live out the rest of their lives hounded by Russian antiSemitism. Yet even in this dismal situation. their spirit was not broken. "We have only one thing to request of you." they said. "to tell the world what is happening here.