Yuli Wexler

Yuli Wexler was a refusenik who refused to accept his fate as a Soviet Jew. Born in Moscow in 1947, he applied for an exit visa to leave the USSR in 1972, in the early days of the Free Soviet Jewry movement. The Soviet authorities initially denied Yuli permission to leave, but in late 1974, after two US senators interceded on his behalf, he received a postcard instructing him to pick up his exit visa.

Yuli arrived in the United States as a stateless refugee in April of 1975. He studied economics at Brandeis University, supplementing his degree from the Moscow Institute of Highway Engineering. He later moved to Washington, D.C. where he worked for the National Food Processors Association, MCI, and Intelsat, where he was Vice President for Europe Sales. Yuli was proud of his role helping nations of the former communist east connect with the world. After retirement, he worked as a consultant on satellite industry projects in former Soviet republics.

Yuli never forgot how fortunate he was to be given the chance to make a new life for himself in the United States with the help of HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society). In retirement, he served three terms on the HIAS board of directors at a time when the organization’s mission had expanded to include assistance to non-Jewish refugees the world over. He was enormously proud to contribute to that mission.

Yuli was, as they say in Russian, an intelligent. He was a voracious reader, steeped in the classics as well as contemporary works of Russian and world literature. He followed current events as religiously as his news editor wife. He loved physics, and as his physicist son-in-law will attest, was endlessly curious about the latest research beyond the engineering feats of rocketry and the satellite industry, which he never ceased to marvel at. He was a student of European history with an encyclopedic memory… a lover of Bach, Schubert, Mozart and Mahler who could never get enough of Glenn Gould and Dietrich Fischer-Diskau. He was a proud Jew, an enthusiastic member of a Jewish book and study group, who approached Judaism as a civilization.

Yuli loved America and, like many Americans-by-choice, he was an incorrigible optimist. Even in these perilous times, he never lost faith in our country’s institutions. Most of all he loved his family. He was the devoted husband of 43 years — and mentor — of Martha Wexler of Bethesda, Maryland. Yuli was the proud father of Cantor Rebecca Khitrik of Watertown, Massachusetts, and Dr. Judith Wexler, a biologist in Jerusalem. He was thrilled when the male contingent of the family expanded to include Becky’s husband Alexander Khitrik and Judy’s husband, Dr. Nicholas Stone. Grandsons Max Khitrik and Leon Stone were a constant source of joy.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to HIAS.