Unlike most authors whose words never make it past faded yellow legal pads, Nancy Rosenfeld’s first foray into writing has a title, a subtitle, a foreword written by renowned attorney Alan Dershowitz and, most important, a publisher.
“Unfinished Journey, `Two People, Two Worlds . . . From Tyranny to Freedom’ ” (University Press of America Inc., $18.95 paperback, $47.50 hardback) is just creeping into bookstores this month. The book chronicles the modern exodus of refuseniks, Jews denied visas to emigrate from the Soviet Union. Though there were many efforts to free these refuseniks during this time, Rosenfeld’s book tells the tale through her own obsessive efforts to free just one political prisoner, Yuri Tarnopolsky, a scientist and published poet.
Through her work on behalf of the grass-roots organization Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry, the Deerfield homemaker mounted an intensive international campaign to free Tarnopolsky. She was so devoted to the campaign that after Tarnopolsky’s release in 1986 and emigration in 1987, she suffered an emotional collapse because of the void the triumph had left.
Rosenfeld’s personal saga began in 1980, when she and husband Martin began preparing to take their oldest son, Stephen, to Israel for his bar mitzvah. To make the most of the experience, they enrolled in a class on Jewish history taught by Marilyn Tallman, co-chairwoman of Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry.
As a member of the Union of Councils of Soviet Jews, the charge of Chicago Action during this time was to keep attention focused on the refuseniks and keep pressure on the Soviet government for their release.
It was Tallman who introduced Rosenfeld to the plight of Soviet Jews by suggesting that her son celebrate his bar mitzvah with a symbolic “twin,” Roman Rozental, a 13-year-old refusenik who was unable to celebrate his own bar mitzvah because of religious persecution. After the “twinning” ceremony at Stephen’s bar mitzvah in Israel, the Rosenfeld family decided to adopt the “twin’s” family. This was the beginning of their involvement with the refuseniks and Chicago Action.
It was in their capacity as volunteers for the organization that Martin and Nancy journeyed to the Soviet town of Kharkov in the summer of 1981 to bring aid and hope to 71 Soviet refuseniks, including the Rozentals.
Upon their return, Nancy received a letter from Tarnopolsky, who was one of the refuseniks, asking for her help in getting an exit visa for himself, wife Olga and daughter Irina.
“(Nancy) was the first ever American or someone from the West who visited us,” said Tarnopolsky in a telephone interview from his home in Narragansett, R.I. “She was a live, real connection, and I couldn’t miss it.”
Rosenfeld’s response to Tarnopolsky’s letter was simple: She would work to bring an end to an already two-year refusal. But her mission became her reason for being when Tarnopolsky was arrested on March 15, 1983, and sentenced to three years in a Siberian labor camp. He was charged with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda with the intent to defame the Soviet state.
Spearheading the rescue effort for Tarnopolsky, Rosenfeld took it from a local cause to a nationwide effort to an international campaign for his release.
“There was not one person she didn’t call on in pursuit of the rescue of the prisoner and his family. No one was too much of a big shot to call-governors, senators, mayors-she didn’t care,” Tallman said. “I always said, `Nancy will do it. She will get Yuri out.’ She inspired confidence.”
Though Tarnopolsky served all three years of his sentence, he said the effect of human rights campaigns waged by Americans “helped (keep) the prisoners from anything worse than detention.
“Soviet prisons had different levels-beatings, torture, deprivation,” Tarnopolsky said. “They would also kill you. They didn’t do that. The efforts of Jewish organizations put limits on what the KGB could do to prisoners. All those people who signed petitions of protest protected prisoners from the worst. . . . It is very underestimated in America what happened in Russia.
“Probably there is a chance without (Nancy’s) unique efforts directed toward my rescue I wouldn’t be alive.”
In addition, Tarnopolsky said, “What those organizations (Chicago Action and other members of the Union of Councils of Soviet Jews) did on an individual basis helped the families of prisoners. My family only survived due to individual help.”
When Soviet officials without explanation granted Tarnopolsky permission to leave Russia and move to the U.S., he settled first in Chicago. “I was delighted to have him here,” Rosenfeld said, “but at the same time I experienced a tremendous void. Sometime after that I got into a critical junction and could not go forward with my life. I sought help and got counseling, which is detailed in the book.”
It wasn’t until almost three years after her emotional collapse that Rosenfeld decided to tell her story. Actually, she said, it was Tarnopolsky who planted the seed for the book when during a conversation he said he had always wanted to know what happened on the American side of the rescue effort.
Soon after they had that conversation, Tarnopolsky sent Rosenfeld his unfinished manuscript of his quest to understand the former Soviet Union. He had begun the book shortly after he arrived in America.
“I felt so intimidated. How could I measure up to this? I joked with him that he was more skilled in English than I was. Although I had written many articles for newsletters, I had never before written a book and I was frightened.”
But, she said, “I felt obligated to tell the story because it was part of my life, and I felt compelled to tell the story because it is part of history.”
She attacked the book with the same compulsion that helped her get Tarnopolsky out of the Soviet Union. The book became a full-time effort and from start to finish took two years to write. She pored through the copious notes she had kept during the rescue effort, and she re-listened to her recordings of phone conversations she had with Tarnopolsky while he was in the Soviet Union.
Many nights she didn’t go to bed, working straight through till morning. Her family life was affected, as it had been when she was working on Tarnopolsky’s rescue. “I wasn’t attentive. I lived and breathed the book,” she said. “Personally the most painful part was when I had to relive my personal trauma in order to document the book.”
When it came to retelling those sensitive parts, such as the emotional trauma and toll she inflicted on her family by her immersion in Tarnopolsky’s cause, she relied on her husband to play editor.
“I read all the sensitive portions to Marty. There were several times he had constructive criticism relating to our family.”
Martin is quick to point out that “both kids are well adjusted,” despite Nancy’s belief that her two sons-Stephen, now 25, and Robert, 22-bear emotional scars from the experience. But he did admit to becoming a “dual parent” during this time.
“Nancy has a tendency to be-what is the word? . . .”
“Intense,” she interjected.
“She can work for 24 hours, and this sometimes interfered with normal family life. She has tunnel vision. Sometimes we would get calls from the Soviet Union in the middle of the night.”
Older son Stephen hasn’t read the book yet because he just graduated from law school and has spent the last few months studying for the bar exam. He said he knows his mom feels guilty about her lack of attention to him when she was busy with Tarnopolsky’s rescue, but it really didn’t bother him, he said. “I was 15 or 16 and kind of didn’t need my mom hanging around all that much.”
As Nancy wrote, she gave each section she finished to both Tarnopolsky and Tallman for comments. Tarnopolsky admitted to being her toughest critic.
“I repeated many times: Less about me, more about the movement,” he said. “The story is so extraordinary-there were so many Americans besides Jews who helped-it deserved attention. During the Holocaust people stood by; this time it was different. The lessons on the Holocaust had been paid attention to and been learned. It had a happy ending.”
Though during the two years she was writing the book she told herself it was okay if it was never published, she cared. Though she said it would have been fine if she had “just experienced the joy of writing,” it really wasn’t.
“The book is my contribution to the Soviet Jewry movement: Never before had it been documented. (The movement) is one of the most important episodes of modern Jewish history.
“And,” as she passionately pauses for effect, “this episode, as the name `Unfinished Journey’ suggests, is not over. Through this story, we hope that people realize that the rescue of Russian Jews remains unresolved.
“This is a movement that the selfless volunteers of the CASJ (Chicago Action) have been working on for 22 years, and this situation is far from over. There remain over 1 million Russian Jews in the former Soviet Union,” Rosenfeld said, though not all want to emigrate. “The situation in the (former Soviet Union) is rapidly changing. It remains unstable, chaotic, civil war continues to rage in several republics. Russians have xenophobia, and Jews are blamed for everything. Anti-Semitism is on the rise.”
To that end, Rosenfeld and Tarnopolsky both feel that their initial thumbs down from potential publishers was unwarranted. When Tarnopolsky first submitted his manuscript to publishers, before Rosenfeld’s book was finished, he was not successful.
“I was told, Russia is not our worst enemy. We’re not interested.” His book, “Memoirs of 1984,” compares author George Orwell’s predictions for 1984 with the harsh reality of the actual time Tarnopolsky spent in the labor camp in that year.
When the duo decided to submit both books together to potential publishers, Rosenfeld said the timing wasn’t the greatest. The Soviet Union had just collapsed, and the reaction by many publishing houses was, “It is a nice story, but who cares about a country that no longer exists?” she said.
“The publishers initially failed to recognize the universality of the story. The struggle, which took place for Yuri and myself, which involved other people and groups of people from different nations, is one that could have taken place anywhere in the world at any time, involving people from all nationalities,” she said.
Helen Hudson, an editor at University Press of America, publishers of Rosenfeld’s book, said University Press took a different view from other publishers. “It was the first time the Soviet Jewry movement in America had been documented,” she said of the book. “It was designed to reach a wide audience, extending from the Jewish community to the public at large.”
It was Tallman who suggested that Rosenfeld ask noted author and Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz to write the foreword for her book, because he was one of two international attorneys who represented the Tarnopolsky case.
“I responded because in some respects (Rosenfeld) is a role model for individual activism in the world,” Dershowitz said in a phone interview. She committed herself to rescue a family privately. “I wish people would have done that in the 1940s as well as today in Bosnia.
“This is the best example of constructive private action on behalf of human rights. It’s a terrific story. I wish they would make a TV movie out of it.”
On a lighter side, Dershowitz, author of the book “Chutzpa,” said he responded to Rosenfeld’s request because “I like women with chutzpa.”
Subsequently, Rosenfeld and Tarnopolsky were successful in selling their individual books to the same publisher. As they prepare for their first round of publicity book signings and lectures in the Chicago area beginning in October, Tarnopolsky admitted to being a little shy, while Rosenfeld “feels like an expectant mother awaiting the birth of her first child.”
Both expect the books to do well.
“Now it’s a good time to look back,” Tarnopolsky said. “The book tells something good about Americans. America can be proud of that.”
