PATH TO FREEDOM

Inna and Felix
Alexandrov came to
the United States
because they want to
live in a free country.
Now, they are making
a home for themselves
in a land with different
customs and
traditions.

ADRIEN CHANDLER

Special to The Jewish News

or nine years, Inna and
Felix Alexandrov
waited. They waited
and endured the hard-
ships that came with
their decision to leave
the Soviet Union.
Felix, 51, an electrical
engineer and inventor, lost his job. So
did Inna, 50, a computer systems
analyst. It took her a year to get
another job. Their daughter, Simona,
24, was lucky enough to remain in art
school.
As the Alexandrovs sit in their
small, sparsely furnished apartment
in Oak Park, they contemplate their
past life as Soviet refuseniks and the
new life they must carve out for
themselves in a new culture and
country.
"We came here because we have
one daughter. We wanted to take her
away from the Soviet Union," Inna
says. "We did it because we wanted
our children and grandchildren to live
in a free country. It's impossible to
live there — not because we couldn't
buy things, but we could not breathe
there."
"Our life is only so lone Felix
adds. "To rely on (Soviet leader
Mikhail) Gorbachev's perestroika
takes too long, too many years for
changes. For me, I thought about my
life, my father's life. I tried to under-
stand my problems. First of all, I'm a
Jew in Russia. Second, Russia is in an
economic crisis. They don't need
engineers, programmers, scientists.
The system is indifferent to people.
When a country has so many prob-
lems, the first people who suffer are
the Jews.
"The third reason was our wish to
be Jews, to live among Jews. I
remember our Jewish culture. My
mother and father spoke Yiddish. In
the Soviet Union, people are scared to
be Jewish?'
The Alexandrovs received permis-
sion to emigrate in December 1987,
but they didn't arrive in Detroit un-
til July 1988. Their journey took two
months, from Leningrad to Vienna to
Rome to Detroit.
Even though their struggle to get
here was long and difficult, the Alex-
androvs are not sorry they left. Inna
is pleased with the reception and

20

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1989

