Speech #980260503

My disappointment in todays special order comes. of course. from the fact that it is necessary at all. What a tragedy it is that the Soviet Union not only allows antiSemitism to exist in Soviet society. but. indeed. officially sanctions this religious and cultural discrimination. In 1979. emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union reached a peak of 4.000 per month. In 1983. only 1.314 Jews received permission to leave. This drastic decrease in Jewish emigration has been paralleled by equally ominous increases in the harassment and arrest of Jewish citizens who seek to emigrate or to practice their religion and heritage. The creation of the spurious AntiZionist Committee of the Soviet Public is a particularly distasteful development. Attempts by the committee and the Soviet press to legitimize ludicrous claims about the lack of hopeful Jewish emigrants waiting to leave the Soviet Union are a frightening indication of the depth of official Soviet antiSemitism. While general facts and figures such as this are alarming. the sorrowful plight of Soviet Jewry becomes most real when we look at the experiences of individuals and families. One Soviet refusenik in which I have a particular interest is David Goldfarb of Moscow. whom I have adopted. Mr. Goldfarb first applied to emigrate to Israel in 1979. His son. Alexandr. had been allowed to emigrate in 1975. after a long and arduous battle with Soviet authorities. but David. his wife Cecilia and their daughter Olga and her family have been denied permission to be reunited with their son and brother. Like so many other Soviet Jews. David Goldfarbs visa request was denied on the grounds that his departure from the Soviet Union was considered undesirable for state reasons. What is unique and alarming. however. is that this reasoning suggests that the Soviet Union considers the entire area of molecular genetics to be a matter of state security. At the time of his initial emigration request. Mr. Goldfarb was head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics of Bacteria and Bacteriophages of the U.S.S.R.