Boston, MA – She was called “the littlest refusenik,” one of the many Soviet Jews denied permission to leave the Soviet Union because her father had been exposed to government secrets.
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But the case of Jessica Katz was special because she was a baby born with a nutritional deficiency that stopped her from growing. She was a tiny baby dying in a Moscow hospital, getting weaker by the day.
It was U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy who, her parents say, eventually saved her life.
Jessica was born in Moscow in 1977 with malabsorption syndrome, which prevented her from digesting food or milk properly. All she needed was baby formula, but it wasn’t available in the Soviet Union.
The Soviet doctors couldn’t save her. Jessica’s parents, Boris and Natalya, were desperate.
Jessica’s grandmother had immigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, with two of her sons and was campaigning to get her baby granddaughter out of the Soviet Union.
At first she helped urge American tourists to take baby formula to Moscow for the Katz family, and for a little while, it worked. It seemed to bring Jessica back from the brink.
But it wasn’t enough. The Katz family knew they needed a permanent solution — access to doctors in the West.
Eventually, the grandmother’s campaign reached Kennedy’s office, and the senator decided to step in. In September 1978, Kennedy traveled to Moscow for a meeting with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to urge him to let the Katz family — or at the very least, Jessica — leave the country immediately.
“If not for his intervention, I would have been arrested very soon [afterward] and it would have been too late for him to intervene,” said Katz, recalling the fate of many of his Jewish friends. “So he saved Jessica, he saved me, he saved the rest our family.”
The first the Katzes knew of it was late one night when they got a mysterious phone call. The caller invited Boris Katz to a midnight meeting with an unnamed guest — and in Soviet Russia, Katz didn’t dare ask who it was.
“You know in the Soviet Union not to ask too many questions over the phone,” he said.
Katz arrived at the meeting and, much to his shock, in walked Kennedy.
“A bunch of KGB men came with him into the room and he just turned around and told the KGB men, ‘Go away,'” Katz recalled. “This was clearly the first [time] ever I witnessed something like this. Here the all-powerful KGB men wanted to be at the meeting and the senator just told them to go away, and they looked at each other and just left. And that was, again, a powerful scene.”
Kennedy spoke to other refuseniks already gathered in the room before pulling Katz aside.
“He said that earlier he had a meeting in the Kremlin with the Soviet leaders and that he specifically asked to allow us to leave the country for medical reasons,” Katz said. “He said that they said yes.”
At first, Katz said, he didn’t believe him, sure that the Soviet authorities would find a way to scupper the plans. Katz went home and told his wife, who also didn’t believe it, he said.
The next morning, a friend called Katz to say he heard Kennedy on the Voice of America radio network listing the names of people leaving the Soviet Union. The Katz family was on the list, the friend said.
Despite the report, however, the Soviet authorities denied it, Katz recalls.
“‘We are telling you that this is not the case,'” he remembers them saying. “But this was just part of the game that they played.”
About three weeks later, with no fanfare, a card arrived in the mail telling the Katz family to pick up their visa. They now had their ticket out of the country.
The exit wasn’t straightforward — the Katzes’ second daughter, Gabriella, was born two days before they were due to leave, so they postponed their exit by five days. And they had to stop over in Vienna, Austria, where they were met by a Kennedy aide for the final leg of their trip.
On landing in Boston, Kennedy was the first person they met. They gave each other a big hug, Katz said.
“Jessica certainly would not have made it if not for his contribution, if not for him taking on the case, getting interested in the case, patiently talking to the Soviet authorities,” Katz told CNN. “It was lucky for us. It saved the baby’s life and created new life for Natalya and me and our children.”
Kennedy’s help for the family didn’t end there. He helped Boris Katz, who had worked with computers, find a job at a computer software company. Today, Katz works at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is the principal research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
“He did it because he wanted to help,” Katz told CNN. “I think that is what he does — did — for many other people. I went to a number of events where other people whom he helped gave various speeches and I learned many more cases [where] he helped people because he likes to help people. It is his job to help people.”
Today, little Jessica Katz is 31 years old. She got engaged last year, on the same weekend Kennedy’s cancer diagnosis was announced to the public.
Inspired by Kennedy’s life of public service, Jessica Katz works at finding housing for the homeless in New York City. She says she has no choice but to look after those less fortunate than she is, because Kennedy proved to her how much it means, and that it can work.
Jessica Katz lacks the cynicism about the government that many others in her generation may have. Kennedy, she said, proved that some politicians have a desire to accomplish good things and fight injustice.
“He saved my life. He could have spent his time doing anything,” Jessica Katz said. “He’s from the fanciest, most powerful family in Massachusetts, and probably in the country, and he decided to spend his time helping out me and my family.”
That has instilled in her a deep sense of public service, she said. And that may be the best thing Kennedy has left behind.
“That that would be his largest, biggest part of his legacy — as someone who cared deeply about people, who felt, I think, very deeply people’s suffering and wanted to alleviate it and wanted to help,” Jessica Katz said. “And I am pretty confident that this is how he will be remembered. He was an extraordinary individual and this is how he will stay, certainly in our memories and the memories of millions of others.”
Amazing story.
WOW. What an amzing story. On talk radio many callers were saying he did good things for alterior motives. I think it’s pure non sense and when someone does something good who cares what the reasonings are? Senator Kenedy did many good things for all faiths and he should be remebered for the good that he did for humanity.
Why do people always have to focus on the negative?
Were are all the Kennedy haters?
This good deed will certainly meet him up on high! No good deed goes unnoticed!
So let me get this straight….. she was brought TO the USA for medical care because the govt healthcare in the USSR WASNT TREATING HER????? I thought we have terrible medical care here, at least thats what the left will tell you. Maybe its not bad after all?!
The Kennedy’s legacy of hate toward the Jews were only voiced through one Kennedy, and that was Patrick Joe Kennedy, father of nine children – the most famous being JFK, Robert, and Ted. In fact, his children all sought to further the Jewish cause which was probably the biggest curse he could have endured despite having to bury four of his children. Ted was a great supporter of Israel, and served the public with the staunch belief of raising awareness to the underprivileged.
Gevaldig….i hoped he saved many people
What was kennedy’s voting record on Israel? Over the past 40 years, of course.
Due to the fact that many Chasidic Jews sue any derogatory remakes breastfeed by Glen Becks, Rush Limbaugh’s of this world I would hope the VIN would post this editorial form today’s Jerusalem Post
The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, a quintessential liberal, reminds us that there was a time when liberalism and pro-Israelism were synonymous. Kennedy-style liberalism was rooted in optimism about human nature, trust in the good that government can do, and faith in the power of negotiations to resolve seemingly intractable problems.
Kennedy made his first trip to Israel in 1962 as a prelude to his senatorial campaign. Though it was billed as a “private visit,” Kennedy gave a “fervent Zionist address” before 2,000 Hebrew University students. A handful of local communists protested the appearance. In those days, liberals and communists were bitter enemies.
As a freshman senator, Kennedy became chair of the subcommittee on international refugees. When he came to suspect that UNRWA money – largely contributed by US taxpayers – was being diverted to Ahmed Shukeiry, Yasser Arafat’s predecessor, and his gunmen, he protested. After visiting Arab refugee camps in Lebanon and the Jordanian-occupied West Bank, Kennedy advocated rehabilitation and training programs to help those displaced by the 1948 war start new lives. Israeli leaders supported his efforts. But the Arabs insisted that the only just solution for the refugees was their return to their original homes and the dismantling of Israel.
KENNEDY was by no means a knee-jerk supporter of this country. He opposed Israeli retaliatory raids against Arab fedayeen and called for third-party mediation. In 1966, he introduced his own plan for Middle East peace which advocated respect for the territorial integrity of all states in the region. The Arabs would have none of it.
After the 1967 Six Day War, Kennedy remained a steadfast friend of Israel and said that on a personal basis, he did not object to Jerusalem remaining united under Israeli sovereignty. During the Nixon administration, he urged the sale of Phantom fighter planes to Israel, clashing with J.W. Fulbright, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee.
By the early 1970s, he had became a key champion of the Soviet Jewry movement. In 1974, he irritated the Kremlin by meeting with Jewish refuseniks in Moscow.
Throughout the Nixon and Ford years, Kennedy steadfastly championed military aid to Israel.
When Jimmy Carter pushed a major arms package for Saudi Arabia, Kennedy voted against – though he honored a White House request not to lead the opposition to the deal. He also opposed Carter’s occasional flirtations with the then-quarantined PLO.
And when the Carter administration supported an Arab-inspired UN Security Council resolution calling for the removal of all Jewish settlements beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines, Kennedy called the US vote “shameful.” He wanted to see the parties negotiate the issues – including settlements. He unsuccessfully challenged Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination, while receiving strong support from Rabbi Alexander Schindler of the Reform movement and other liberal Jews. (Carter ultimately lost his bid for a second term to Ronald Reagan.)
When Reagan sought to sell F-15s to Saudi Arabia in 1981, he too ran into opposition from Kennedy. And in the face of unbridled Reagan administration outrage over the Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear facility later that same year, Kennedy lambasted the administration as “profoundly wrong.”
THE PRO-ISRAEL liberalism embodied by Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Jackson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jacob Javits seems archaic nowadays.
Their generation knew first-hand that the Arabs’ rejection of Israel’s existence was at the root of the conflict. Today, calls for throwing the Jews into the sea have been replaced by reasonable-sounding Arab initiatives for a two-state solution. Only the fine print – pertaining to recognition, borders, militarization and refugees – suggests something else. Once there were no settlements, and still the Arabs sought Israel’s destruction. Yet yesterday, a CNN primer of the conflict pointed to settlements as the stumbling block to peace.
Maybe the old Kennedy liberals were really centrists, and today’s progressives are really leftists. Or maybe, 60 years on, liberals have just grown uncomfortable and impatient – after Lebanon wars, intifadas, checkpoints, barriers and Gaza blockades.
The liberal catechism is 1. All conflicts are soluble; 2. Israel is the stronger party; 3. And so it must take the greater risks for peace.
Liberals are exasperated by Israel’s failure to embrace these principles categorically. Yet we survive in this region because we don’t.
Edward Kennedy understood all this and more. Israel feels his loss acutely.