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| Gina Waldman –
Lifelong Activist |
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 Gina Waldman was
Gina Bublil, a young refugee from Libya, when she first arrived in
San Francisco. She and her family had fled to Italy when
anti-Semitic mobs were rampaging in Tripoli in the wake of Israel’s
Six-Day War victory. A college friend invited Gina to San Francisco
in 1969 and helped her find a job in an international bank. One day
Gina saw “Let My People Go” banners and people chanting, “Pou Pou
Pompidou” in front of the St. Francis Hotel. She inquired what that
was all about and learned that the BACSJ was protesting the visit of
French president Georges Pompidou, who had just signed a trade deal
with the Soviet Union. She was fascinated to learn that in America
people are free to speak out about what they stand for.
Gina soon started speaking in public herself, telling an audience at
the Jewish Community Center how her family got out of Libya. Bob
Hirsch recalls being in that audience with his wife, Doris, who was
the BACSJ executive secretary. Doris remarked to Hal and Selma
Light, “There’s a girl who could really be an asset to our
organization.” Light offered Gina a job that paid less than what she
was earning at the bank, but the excitement of working for a Jewish
cause was irresistible. She quickly learned about the needs of
Soviet Jewry and the oppressive regime in which they lived, and also
became trained by Hal Light in his assertive methods.
When announcements heralded the visit of a Soviet cultural group
Gina would investigate where they would be staying so BACSJ
activists could greet them with informational picketing. She called
several hotels claiming to be employed by a florist who had to
deliver a bouquet to the visiting prima ballerina. An affirmative
response directed the BACSJ team to the correct hotel where they
handed copies of The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn –
it was banned in Russia – to members of the Kirov Ballet.
Gina was also looking out for international scientific conferences
that might include attendees from the Soviet Union. Realizing that
just telling people that Jewish scientists were being persecuted in
Russia would not be very effective, she would focus on an individual
case. In 1974 BACSJ staffers came to a conference with handouts and
petitions on behalf of Alexander Goldfarb, a molecular biologist and
refusenik who was Sharansky’s predecessor as English translator for
Andrei Sakharov. Many of the conference attendees signed the
petition urging the Soviet government to allow Goldfarb to emigrate,
and when Russians presented their papers and expected to be
questioned on their technical content, what they heard instead was:
“Could you please tell us why your government refuses to allow
Alexander Goldfarb to emigrate?” Upon returning to Moscow the
delegates were debriefed by the KGB and described how embarrassed
they were facing the San Francisco audience. Within a month Goldfarb
received permission to leave Russia and gave credit to Western
scientists for influencing the Soviet government.
When Gina married she was able to get a visa in her married name of
Gina Waldman to enter the Soviet Union by applying at the Soviet
Embassy in London. She was too well known as the ringleader of
sit-in demonstrations and noisy rallies to ever get a visa at the
consulate in San Francisco under her maiden name. In London Waldman
purchased a copy of The Times and was astonished to read a
front-page story about Andrei Sakharov winning the Nobel Peace
Prize. She immediately folded the front page into the middle of the
paper and packed it into her suitcase just before she and Selma
Light checked in for their flight to Moscow.
The newspaper was overlooked by the customs agent in Moscow who
inspected Waldman’s suitcase. She showed it to the first refuseniks
that she and Light visited that day, Valdimir Slepak and Alexander
Lerner, and then took it to Sakharov. He told Light and Waldman that
he had already learned about the award from some foreign
correspondents, but Waldman recalls that he was “like a little kid
with a new toy” when he saw the story in print. He said he was sure
that Soviet authorities would never allow him to go to Oslo to
accept the Nobel Peace Prize, and then added, “I would like to send
a letter to my wife, who is now in Italy for eye surgery. Do you
think you could mail it when you leave the Soviet Union?” Waldman
replied, “I won’t mail the letter; I’ll take it to her personally
because we’re going to Italy.” Sakharov was delighted and
meticulously wrote and rewrote the letter which, as Waldman learned
later, contained Sakharov’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. He also
gave Waldman a list of prisoners, their photographs and information
about what they needed from supporters in the West.
She also viewed art by the “Aleph” group of twelve Russian Jewish
artists that was on display without government approval in the
one-room Leningrad apartment of refusenik artist Evgeny Abezgauz.
The Soviet government was treating avant-garde art with the same
contempt that was shown to political dissidents and refuseniks.
Abezgauz made slides and negatives of the Aleph group’s art and had
them smuggled them out of Russia to the BACSJ. From the slides and
negatives Waldman organized a documentary exhibit of forty paintings
called “Twelve from the Underground.” The art show opened in San
Francisco in August 1976 and toured forty-one cities in North
America.
A year later the BACSJ launched a massive rally after Anatoly
Shcharansky was arrested and charged with treason. Avital was
overwhelmed by the support and upon her return to San Francisco in
1979 she went with Waldman to the Soviet Consulate. The two women
asked consular officials to send a letter to Anatoly, who was in
Chistopol Prison, but they would not accept it. Avital Sharansky and
Gina Waldman refused to leave, even at 5 p.m. as the office was
closing, so in front of TV cameras they were arrested.
On another occasion at the Soviet Consulate Waldman devised a
publicity stunt to crash a formal party celebrating a Soviet
holiday. Dressed in an elegant gown and stepping out of a taxi, she
pointed at the phalanx of BACSJ protesters and yelled to a security
guard, “Can’t you get rid of these terrible people?” She handed him
a BACSJ protest brochure in lieu of an official invitation and
calmly walked inside. She proceeded to the women’s bathroom and
wrote “Free Anatoly Sharansky” in red lipstick on the mirror.
Spotting Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle, she invited him
to see her handiwork and have something juicy to report in his next
column.
Gina Waldman now lives in Tiburon.
*Excerpted from TRIUMPH OVER TYRANNY: The Heroic Campaigns that
Saved 2,000,000 Soviet Jews by Philip Spiegel (www.triumphovertyranny.com)
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