4.2.12 WC: 191694 Moscow, I wanted to meet him, so I stood in line waiting to shake his hand after the performance. When I introduced myself, he grabbed me in a long bear-hug. “You gave us hope,” he told me. “We knew you were out there fighting for our rights, even thought we couldn’t contact you. You made us feel safer.” I had no idea that Rostropovich or any of the other artists or dissidents whose rights we advocated, had ever heard of us, or had any idea of what we were doing on their behalf. Rostropovich’s hug, and what he said, was more than enough compensation for all the pro-bono work we had done on behalf of dissidents and artists around the world. I had become involved in the defense of Soviet dissidents after reading Elie Wiesel’s eye-opening book “The Jews of Silence,” which first alerted me to the plight of Soviet Jewish and non-Jewish dissidents. I traveled to the Soviet Union and other parts of Eastern Europe on several occasions during the 1970s and 1980s and filed briefs on behalf of dissidents Refusenicks and others. I have written extensively about this aspect of my human rights work elsewhere” and will not repeat it here. Suffice it to say that my unwillingness to limit my advocacy only to Jewish Refusenicks in the Soviet block caused a rift with some Jewish and Israeli organizations, but I insisted that human rights must extend to all who are oppressed or discrimination against. One of my Soviet clients was Silva Zalmunsen, who after several years of confinement was finally released from the Soviet Gulag. When she finally came to America, I along with her other American lawyers arranged to meet her over lunch at Lou Siegel’s, a kosher restaurant in Manhattan. It would be our first “reunion” — hopefully the first of many — with the clients we had never met. Our encounter was emotional and tearful. Knowing of Silva’s love for all things Jewish, we decided to order a real old-fashioned Jewish meal for our Friday lunch. The first dish was cholent, a