My meeting with a group of cancer victims and their families was one of the most moving experiences of the entire visit and I wanted to share with my colleagues my impressions of this meeting with a group of very courageous individuals. Inna KitrosskayaMeiman. Tatjana KheifetzBogomolnaya. and Benjamin Charny are not unique in their longterm efforts to obtain visas from the Soviet Government in order to emigrate and join families and friends living in Israel and the United States. Their tragedy. shared by thousands of Soviet Jews in similar straits. is further compounded by the fact that all three have been stricken with serious forms of cancer while waiting for visas that never come. All three have some hope of further treatment in the West where there has been significant progress in successfully treating some forms of cancer. All three have. by necessity. undergone operations and painful treatments that have not worked and have exacerbated other ailments. All three have repeatedly applied to the OVIR for visas to emigrate but have been repeatedly denied. Yet all three are continuing their efforts to leave the Soviet Union and show their courage and humanitarianism by serving as models for other refuseniks. Inna KitrosskayaMeiman. a 53yearold English teacher. is dying of cancer diagnosed in 1983.
Keywords matched
emigrate visas