A Visit to Moscow

A Visit to Moscow is a graphic memoir of Rabbi Rafael Grossman's trip to the Soviet Union in 1965.  He went there with a group of American rabbis from the Rabbinical Council of America. Rabbi Grossman led a congregation in Long Branch, NJ and was chosen for the trip because of his Eastern European ancestry. 

The story itself is quite short, 63 pages. 12 more pages follow with explanations about the trip, a saga about Soviet Jews, a Note from the author and the Illustrator's Sketchbook. This is not a memoir with alot of action. Grossman probably spent less than an hour with the Jewish man he wanted to see. Meyer Gurwitz was the brother of one of Grossman's acquaintances, Meyer's sister Bela.  She had not heard from her brother in over ten years and was worried about him. After feigning a headache at the Moscow hotel where Grossman was staying, he got in a taxi and traveled to Meyer's home. There Grossman found out that Meyer had a ten year old son who had never left the one room home he had been born in. Meyer explained that if he let his son outside that the KGB would force him into a Soviet school where he would lose his Jewish heritage or worse, be killed.

While the story was interesting, it could hardly be described as scintillating reading. I enjoyed the artwork by Yevgenia Nayberg. Nayberg watched Soviet noir films and reviewed photos from the 1960s to obtain a visual direction. She used subdued blue, green and yellow colors in the drawings. 

3 out of 5 stars.