Say Little, Do Much

Though the ostensible purpose of the trip was to explore business opportunities, Mr. Reichmann’s real purpose was to meet with the refuseniks. And while he was the last person in the world to travel with fanfare and an entourage, in Moscow he did. After meeting with senior Soviet officials, he organized a motorcade of limousines carrying himself in one car and senior Canadian officials in another, and drove ostentatiously through the streets of Moscow to the apartments of several refuseniks.

That very public display was carefully thought out. Once inside their host’s home, he and Mordechai Neustadt explained to their hosts that all the hoopla was for their benefit: “Now you are on the map. America knows about you. The West knows about you. They cannot deal with you without creating an international incident. They cannot just make you disappear.”

On another occasion, Grisha Wasserman — today Rabbi Zvi Wasserman, with an Internet following of thousands of talmidim — was invited to meet Albert Reichmann in the latter’s hotel room. He was terrified. “I would as soon have marched into the local police station and burned the Soviet flag,” he says. Seeing his discomfiture, Mr. Reichmann assured him that the association would protect him: “Putting you on my radar will only help you.”

Upon his return from that first trip, Albert Reichmann made a parlor meeting in his home for the Vaad. But when he got up to speak about those whom he had met, he was so overcome with emotion that he could not speak through the tears. Those tears were more powerful than any speech, and brought many new donors to the Vaad.