The huge jet touched down at Los Angeles airport in an early morning mist bringing to the New World a group of Soviet Jews pawns in an international political drama which began when they summoned up the courage to seek exit visas in Russia. They've left Moscow and Minsk, Odessa and Kiev. They have been processed and counseled in Vienna and Rome, and now they are in America. Refugees. Most of them without funds, a psychologically unprepared propagandized people from a police state, full of hope and anxiety, exultation and fear, and many misconceptions. Waiting for them are social workers and volunteers from the Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles. Two cultures meet, tense as they eye each other. One hears words of welcome from the American strangers and murmurs in Russian from the refugees. They are led to waiting cars, and before the day is out, they are settled in apartments rented for them by the Jewish agency.
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