'Littlest refusenik' on Kennedy: 'He saved my life'

'Littlest refusenik' on Kennedy: 'He saved my life'



Sen. Kennedy (left) appealed to Leonid Brezhnev to allow the Katzes (Boris with Jessica) to leave the USSR.



Today, Jessica Katz is 31 years old. Inspired by Kennedy's life of public service, she works helping the homeless.

BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -- 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.

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.

***

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."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/26/littlest.refusenik.kennedy/index.html