A refusenik’s harrowing journey to freedom

JORDAN MOSHE

Furman was a staunch opponent of the Soviet regime’s limitation of the right of Jews to emigrate. Hers was a harrowing journey that eventually brought her, her husband, and baby daughter to Israel. It was the fulfilment of a dream.

“I wanted to go to Israel from an early age,” says Furman, who was a guest of the Jewish Women’s Benevolent Society (JWBS). She shared her life story with a JWBS audience at the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre last Thursday evening.

Born in Kiev in 1959, Furman was refused permission to leave Russia for Israel when she applied in 1978. She, her mother and grandfather became known as refuseniks. This was a term applied to Soviet Jews who were denied permission to emigrate by the Soviet authorities.

“No one knew how the authorities decided to let you leave or not. It was completely random and unpredictable. We thought we stood a chance – of what value were two women and an old man to the government? However, they refused us for no apparent reason, and I still don’t know why.”

Furman says that although she loved Russian literature and culture, she never felt connected to the country or its people. Life for Russians was difficult, but faced with the added prejudice and discrimination, Jews were particularly disadvantaged. This position was made far worse by attempting to leave and failing.

“Anyone who thought about leaving was considered a traitor,” says Furman. “If you were denied permission, you lost your job, your income, your few friends.

“Ninety percent of Jews who became refuseniks just accepted it, and tried to move on, constantly telling the 10% who wanted to protest not to make life even more difficult for them.”

Furman was relentless in her drive to take her family to Israel. Although world Jewry was lobbying tirelessly for the release of fellow Jews from Russia, the protest movement was not something refuseniks could easily take part in behind the Iron Curtain. Furman embarked on a solitary protest, coming to the attention of the KGB and law enforcement with whom she had frequent run-ins.

“I had no access to the Jewish lobby fighting for us to leave,” she says. “I was on my own. The KGB would beat me, and often threatened to rape and kill me. They kept suggesting that I make an official apology, to say that I was young and stupid. Other Jews told me to be quiet, to avoid drawing attention. Still, I kept at it.”

After months of protesting, Furman and her mother realised that if they remained in Kiev, the KGB would soon silence them for good. They left Kiev to settle in a more liberal region of Russia. This enabled Furman to finally connect with the liberation movement in the early 1980s. While living in Leningrad in 1986, she met Lev Furman, an underground Hebrew teacher and fellow refusenik. Within three days of meeting, Lev proposed, and they were engaged four days later.

“Lev was very involved in the [Hebrew] ulpan at the time,” says Furman. “He was a zealot of the refusenik movement, willing to pay any price for the freedom of his family and that of his people. His anti-government behaviour made him hated by the KGB, and he was soon arrested for his activity. Because only a first-degree relative could appeal a prisoner’s case, he asked me to marry him so that I could keep pressure on the government to release him. I agreed, and we married. We fell in love only later on, but we established a connection very quickly.”

The months which followed were tumultuous. When the KGB learned that Furman was pregnant, a KGB officer told her that they would make sure that neither she nor the child would survive delivery if she and her husband continued to protest. “They said that I just had to apologise, and we’d be safe. I refused, and so when I went into hospital to give birth, they made sure I was as isolated as possible and therefore an easy target.

“The doctors overdosed me with sedatives, and I was close to cardiac arrest. Thanks to one good doctor who stopped them, I survived, and was able to give birth to my daughter, Aliyah.”

Even after the birth of her daughter, the authorities continued to threaten her life, and remained adamant that they could not leave the Soviet Union. Finally, on Israel’s 40th birthday, 15 May 1988, Furman, her husband, 13-month-old daughter, mother, and father-in-law were granted permission, and left the Soviet Union for Israel. “We landed in a Tel-Aviv which was celebrating Israel’s day of independence,” says Furman. “There were fireworks all around us, and Lev’s father said that they were in celebration of our arrival.”

After initially living at an absorption centre in Mevaseret Zion, the family was adopted by Ra’anana as part of a new absorption programme. Although life was far from easy, Furman says she felt at home in the Jewish state. Armed with very simple Hebrew, she worked to help new immigrants settle in Israel. She also travelled extensively to raise money to aid their absorption.

In 1998, she was offered the role of shlicha (Israel emissary) at the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in the United States, to which she, her husband and two daughters relocated for a four-year term.

Furman was offered the option of continuing to work at the JNF, and she and her family decided to remain in the US, where they still live. Today executive director of the JNF in Philadelphia, Furman visits Russia and Israel often, and considers herself a fortunate wife, mother, and grandmother.

“I’m safe, free, and blessed,” she says. “Life is my gift, and it cannot be taken for granted. While I recognise the cruelty I suffered, I don’t think there’s anything to gain from being a victim.”

She says her journey has taught her that as Jews, we must recognise our achievements. “The refuseniks defeated one of the cruellest systems in the world,” she says. “We freed 1.5 million people. The Jewish people have done unbelievable things, and we need to stop for a moment at times, pinch ourselves, and appreciate what we have done in a very short space of time.

“We are strong, and we can only get stronger. We believed we’d triumph over the Soviets, and we did it. If we believe we can triumph over anti-Semitism, we can do that, too.”