I visited Ephraim Kholmyansky in Moscow in October 1987. It was my second trip to the USSR to help encourage Jews, bringing hope, make personal connections, and smuggle in a small amount of things to help them but that could have had me in some big trouble with the KGB.

I knew about Kholmynasky before as I spent much of my early adulthood engrossed in the movement to free Soviet Jews. So, for me, when we met, I was meeting one of my heroes. But as much as I thought I knew Kholmynasky through my activism and due to his prominence and having recently been in a Soviet prison, until I read hi...