SOVIET UNION: Reverse Diaspora

For Soviet Jews who emigrate to Israel, Vienna is the journey's most important way station. There they eagerly leave the crowded trains and planes that took them out of Russia, receive a quick briefing on their future by the Jewish Agency and board an El Al jet for the flight to the Promised Land. In the past two years, 44,446 emigrants have made that journey.

Vienna is also the way station on a reverse emigration, a considerably smaller and less-heralded diaspora of the disenchanted. Currently, 96 Soviet Jews for whom Israel did not...

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