For Immediate Release

December 23, 2009

Contact:

Larry Lerner, UCSJ President, (908) 305-8943.

Leonid Stonov, UCSJ Director of International Bureaus, (847) 529-8954.

UCSJ MOURNS THE DEATH OF ITS NATIONAL DIRECTOR

Micah H. Naftalin Provided Over Two Decades of Inspirational Leadership

Washington, DC–Micah H. Naftalin, an inspirational leader in human rights activism

on behalf of Soviet Jews, died earlier today in Washington, DC. He

was 76 years old.  Since February 1987, Mr. Naftalin served as national

director of UCSJ, an independent grassroots human rights organization

operating across the former Soviet Union (FSU).

“I am deeply saddened by the loss of such a great human rights leader

within the Jewish community,” said Larry Lerner, UCSJ’s president.

“Micah was a friend and colleague whom I admired for many years.

He will be greatly missed”

Under Mr. Naftalin’s leadership, UCSJ monitoring has long been the

principal source of primary data on religious discrimination and,

especially, antisemitic and xenophobic hate crimes and propaganda

across the FSU, with special emphasis on Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

In early 2007, he initiated, with cooperation from the Moscow Helsinki

Group, the Coalition Against Hate, an unprecedented  consortium of 30

religious freedom and human rights NGOs from Russia, Ukraine and

Belarus, pledged to provide cooperative activism and monitoring of

hate crimes.

One of Mr. Naftalin’s many strengths as a human rights leader was the

close consultative relationships he maintained over the years with the

White House, Congress, the State Department, and the media. He

regularly briefed U.S. officials on antisemitism and the general human

rights situation in the former Soviet Union (FSU).  He represented

UCSJ at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE),

as well as at other international human rights conventions throughout

Europe and North America.   In 1995 he represented the United States

Government as an official public member of the U.S. Delegation to the

CSCE Human Dimension Conference in Warsaw.

In 1989, Mr. Naftalin as a leader of UCSJ helped organize the USSR’s first

human rights conference, in Moscow. A year later, he presided over the founding

of the Russian-American Bureau on Human Rights, the first Western human rights

organization ever registered in the Soviet Union. Mr. Naftalin later oversaw the

establishment of six more human rights and rule of law monitoring bureaus in

Tbilisi, Lviv, Minsk, Almaty, Bishkek and Riga, and traveled extensively

throughout the region.

Mr. Naftalin had a highly distinguished career before joining UCSJ. He

served as Chief Counsel and Deputy Director of the U.S. House of

Representatives’ Select Committee on Government Research and

as a senior policy analyst with the National Academy of Sciences. In

1982, he joined Chairman Elie Wiesel on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial

Council, where he was appointed Deputy Director and, later, Acting

Director. On his watch, the selection of the museum site adjacent to

the Washington Mall, early planning of the Museum program, and

fundraising under his suggested title, “A Campaign To Remember,” were

all accomplished. He served in that capacity for five years.

Mr. Naftalin held a BA from Brandeis University (1955) and a JD from The George

Washington University School of Law (1960).  He served in Korea as an

enlisted man in the U.S. Army 1955-57. He is a former president of the

Chevy Chase (MD) Elementary School PTA; vice-president of Tifereth

Israel Congregation (Washington, D.C.); and a member of the national

board of directors of Davida Patient Citizens, a grassroots advocacy

group comprising 30,000 kidney dialysis patients and their families.

He was also listed in Emerald Who’s Who for Executives and

Professionals.

Mr. Naftalin is survived by his wife Beth, MSW, a psychotherapist,

two children–Marilyn Weaver and Suzanne Rand–and three

grandchildren.  A son, Ethan, died at age 39 in 2004. Details of Mr.

Naftalin’s funeral arrangements are below.

UCSJ’s staff and board members extend our condolences to the Naftalin

family in the wake of this sudden, devastating tragedy.

Funeral 8:30 am December 24, 2009

Tifereth Israel

7701 16th Street, NW

Washington, DC  20012

202-882-1605

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the:

Ethan Naftalin Memorial Fund

c/o Law & Associates

6111 Tulane Avenue

Glen Echo, MD  20812