Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.Leonard "Buddy" Goldstein, who used earnings from his truck-rental business for his wife's longtime mission to help Jews out of the Soviet Union, died Friday at age 90.
Goldstein's wife, Shirley, and the late Miriam Simon received much of the acclaim for the effort to enable "refuseniks" to get out of the former Soviet Union. The Soviets for years blocked Jews' efforts to obtain exit visas.
Buddy Goldstein assisted his wife's efforts to extricate those Jews with financial and moral support.
"He had to back me," his wife said Saturday. "I couldn't have been as active as I was if he hadn't."
Shirley Goldstein, 89, said the project, generally called the Omaha Committee for Soviet Jewry, brought more than 100 Jewish families from the Soviet Union to Omaha.
Buddy Goldstein went to the Soviet Union with his wife once, but she kept going back, close to 10 times. She would acquire names and information that she would give to congressmen and others who would lobby for families' exits. The effort lasted from the early 1970s to about 1990.
"She was followed by KGB and didn't care," their son, Donald Goldstein, said Saturday. For a long period she was denied entry into the Soviet Union. The KGB was the Soviet secret police.
The Jewish Federation of Omaha named Buddy Goldstein its Humanitarian of the Year in 2011. He and his wife were named to the Ak-Sar-Ben Court of Honor in 2006 for philanthropy and community service.
"He was quiet, very soft-spoken, but very, very smart," said Leah Kosinovsky, whom the Goldsteins helped out of the Soviet Union. Kosinovsky, now 75, came to Omaha from the city of Minsk with her family in 1980.
"He would not say a lot," Kosinovsky said of Buddy Goldstein, "but when he said something . it had weight."
Buddy Goldstein graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1942, married Shirley that year, then served as a supply officer in the Army Air Corps during World War II. After the war he ran the family business, Capitol Rent-a-Truck, in Omaha.
Among other projects, the Goldsteins sponsored an ongoing lecture series on human rights at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and transplant research at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Donald Goldstein said his father's loyalty was evident in the fact that he still had regular, separate lunch outings with his college fraternity brothers, his tennis buddies and a group of pals he accumulated through the years.
Besides his wife and son he is survived by daughters Gail Raznick of Boulder, Colo., and Kathy Goldstein-Helm of Omaha; six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. A memorial service will take place at 10:30 a.m. Monday at Beth El Synagogue, 14506 California St.
Memorials may be made to the Jewish Federation of Omaha Foundation, the NU Foundation-Goldstein Human Rights Lecture or the charity of one's choice.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1123, rick.ruggles@owh.com
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