"I found out the Russian athletes were staying at the USC dormitories," Yaroslavsky says. "I got a bunch of my friends and I said, 'Let's make some picket signs, call the press, and we'll picket these guys.' It was a sensation -- TV cameras showed up and the Jewish press did stories. It changed the whole paradigm."
That fall, Yaraslovsky and a fellow activist, Holocaust survivor Si Frumkin, enlisted newscaster George Putnam.
"I was a flaming liberal and George Putnam was this conservative, right-wing, pro-war . . . he was the personification of political evil to my generation in those days," says Yaroslavsky. "But he was anti-Soviet and very favorable to Soviet Jews."
It was Putnam who suggested a candlelight protest march that drew more than 5,000 people, including Mayor Sam Yorty, Councilman Tom Bradley and TV performer Steve Allen on a chilly December night in 1969.
"We repeated it the following year," recalls Yaroslavsky. "And in 1970, we had over 10,000 people. It took this movement from an insular, talking-to-ourselves movement to taking this issue to the people."
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susan.king@latimes.com
