Jews Ussr

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev agreed Wednesday to review the cases of 355 "refuseniks" who have been denied Soviet permission to emigrate, the head of a U.S. committee on Soviet Jewry said. Gorbachev also acknowledged that anti-Semitism is a problem in the Soviet Union, although not a "deep-rooted" one, and he refused to issue a statement condemning it specifically, said Shoshana Cardin, leader of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.

* An estimated 200,000 Soviet Jews are expected to go to Israel this year. * Between 7 million and 20 million Soviets are expected to leave their country in this decade. * The International Labor Organization estimates that 30% of workers in Soviet state enterprises are "surplus to requirements".

A young Palestinian man dispassionately sipped a cup of tea at a counter in the international departure lounge at Cairo International Airport. It was his third cup that morning. There was nothing else to do. He'd been waiting at the airport for three days. A marine engineer, he found himself "at sea" in a different sense from usual.

Raisa G. Dashkevich stood Sunday at the edge of the ravine known as Babi Yar where she had stood exactly 50 years before when Nazi soldiers were executing tens of thousands of Jews. "The closer I get to the ravine, the stronger I feel," the 75-year-old retired accountant said as tears streamed down her face. "The whole tragedy goes before my eyes like a movie." She recalled that she clasped her 3-year-old son to her breast and accepted that their lives were over. Then she heard machine-gun fire.

Fifty years after Nazi soldiers killed and burried her parents along with thousands of other Soviet Jews in a ravine near Kiev, Yevgeniva Podolskaya recounted the nightmare to about 700 people gathered in West Hollywood on Sunday to commemorate the massacre at Babi Yar. She told how she escaped the slaughter by crawling over the dead and dying. "I could see parents trying to cover children with their bodies," the 67-year-old, gray-haired Los Angeles resident said through a translator.

Half a century after one of the worst atrocities of the World War II Holocaust, authorities in the Ukraine plan a solemn commemoration at the site where at least 50,000 Jews were executed by Nazis. Called Babi Yar, the notorious ravine on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital was officially ignored for years. But on Sunday, in a gesture meant to signal a new attitude, city and republican leaders will attend the memorial ceremony.

Israeli officials said Tuesday that they have made progress in getting assurances from the United States about the scope of proposed Middle East peace talks. But, they hastened to add, there are still significant differences between Washington and Jerusalem over touchy issues of Palestinian representation. "We can say that we have a certain progress in various matters relative to the peace process," Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said. "We will have to have further discussions about many issues."

The Bush Administration turned up the heat on Israel on Tuesday after the two governments failed to agree on terms for $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, with a senior official charging that the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is endangering Secretary of State James A. Baker III's drive for Arab-Israeli peace talks.

The trail in search of peace in the Middle East took a detour into a quest for diplomatic calm between Israel and the United States as Secretary of State James A. Baker III met Monday with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir for three hours without reaching an agreement over a disputed Israeli request for new U.S. aid. The pair emerged virtually mum from their talks, announcing only that another session will occur today.

By picking a rare public fight with Israel and its American supporters Thursday, President Bush displayed the depth of his opposition to Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and sent a clear signal that he is prepared to use all the leverage at his disposal to bring about change.