Many activists and Prisoners of Zion arrived among the new wave of repatriates after Six Day War. They deservedly felt like victors and were very eager to help those who remained behind the Iron Curtain, but the situation that they encountered in Israel was complex.

Israel adhered to a fairly active policy with regard to aliya from the Soviet Union from 1968 to 1971. Assuming—and with good reason—that it was much more effective to exert pressure via other countries, the Israeli leadership created a subdivision of Nativ called Bar that was supposed to help shape public opinion and mobilize political support in the West. Bar established and maintained close relations with national organizations that were founded often with Nativ’s help: the National Council for Soviet Jewry in England, the National Committee for Soviet Jewry in France, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry and also the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry in the U.S., the National Committee for Soviet Jewry in Canada and similar organizations in Australia and South America.

Israel itself exercised a policy of extreme caution with regard to open activity. Fearing that direct pressure from Israel or any commotion in Israel could lead to negative results, the country’s leadership adduced the following considerations to support this view: open activity in Israel could stimulate reinforced Arab pressure on the Soviet Union; Israeli demands would give the Soviet leadership a pretext to demonstrate its tough position in the Arabs’ favor and teach Israel a lesson (the Soviets had frequently given such “lessons” for “interference in their internal affairs” in the past); a commotion in Israel would force the Soviet leadership to adopt even harsher measure against the Jewish movement activists so that they would not harbor any hope of Israeli protection.

In addition, the Israeli intelligence services, not without reason, were apprehensive that the KGB would flood the ranks of the new immigrants with a large number of their agents, and they considered that the new arrivals ought to spend a certain amount of time in a kind of quarantine.

The new arrivals, or olim as they were called, in particular the activists, were sent to ulpans in various provincial towns as distant as possible from correspondents and telephones. They were forbidden to communicate with the press. Strict press censorship was introduced on everything related to aliya from the Soviet Union. Naturally this evoked extreme amazement and also some indignation among the former activists, who were burning with a desire to help their friends.

“I was sent to an absorption center in Afula,” recalls the noted Moscow Hebrew teacher Moshe Palkhan.[1] “We were isolated from each other, thus impeding communication, lest we consider organizing some kind of independent activity. Malkin was sent to Nazareth. I visited him but it was very expensive and very inconvenient. There was no possibility for some kind of joint activity.”

“There was censorship,” notes the prominent Israeli journalist Sara Frenkel.[2] “We knew in advance what could not be mentioned. The authorities were afraid that if the journalists wrote freely, it could cause harm and endanger Soviet Jews. Nevertheless, I would go to the airport where I was permitted to go inside and meet olim, and I sought cases that did not fall under the censorship. Occasionally there were such instances; For example, when the singer Nehama Lifshits arrived in 1968 it was simply impossible not to write about it: she was given a welcoming reception in the most prestigious hall in Tel Aviv; the entire Israeli beau monde was there with Golda Meir at the head. My article about it was published in full.”

The majority of the activists who arrived in Israel and were still fired up from the struggle did not understand why Nativ was suppressing their activity and gagging their mouths. Some suspected the Israeli government of almost playing up to the Soviet Union. Nehemiah Levanon wrote about the Riga Jews’ demonstrative lack of confidence in Nativ:[3] “After their arrival in Israel they criticized the government for not having done enough for their release…some showed blatant hostility toward the government…. To tell the truth, it didn’t surprise me personally…. They knew Soviet socialism and hated it. And although they understood that socialism in the West differs from Soviet socialism, they nevertheless distrusted it.”

Levanon also noted, “Many [former activists] were very supercilious when talking at Nativ offices, almost rude. As a result the connection with some of them grew weaker and with others it was completely lost.”[4]

It was difficult for Levanon because he was unable to reveal to the new arrivals the role that Israel was playing in the ongoing activity that led to their release. Experts at Nativ considered that publicizing Israel’s behind-the-scenes role would diminish the international support that the Soviet Jewry struggle enjoyed.

Nehemiah had a hard time with those who were operating behind the Iron Curtain, wrote the Jewish activist Eitan Finkel’shtein,[5] and he also had a hard time with those who arrived in the country. What kind of people are they? What is hiding behind their oaths of loyalty to their “native land” and the “Zionist cause”? Nehemiah was skeptical about the words of these freshly-minted patriots and he had sufficient basis to fear an influx of agents of the Liubanka [KGB] into the country… Nehemiah disliked refusenik activists the most of all; he saw his task as diverting them from the cause that they had served selflessly and which, in their opinion, they understood better than the bureaucrats from Nativ. Professor Moshe Giterman was a refusenik for six years. He participated in collective actions…in the seminars of refusenik scientists, he wrote protest letters and articles in the Jewish samizdat, he “conversed” with KGB investigators, and he discussed the problem of Jewish emigration with foreign visitors. Immediately after his arrival in Israel, Giterman appeared at the Bureau to share his thoughts with Nehemiah. Nehemiah listened with a gloomy look and at some point interrupted his visitor: “Giterman, it seems you are a physicist. Go and work as a physicist. I am the one who works as Moses in this country!” Nehemiah thought he was a good Moses. He stubbornly forced open a crack in the Iron Curtain and relentlessly paved the way from Soviet Egypt to the Promised Land. Like the Biblical Moses, Nehemiah was not very familiar with those whom he intended to lead out.

 

Returning from the U.S. in 1969 to replace the aging Shaul Avigur as head of Nativ, Levanon stated that there was, in essence, a complete break between Nativ and the new arrivals.[6] The new arrivals knew just as well as the Nativ experts that open Israeli support in and of itself was incapable of making an impression on Soviet authorities. At the same time, the former activists were quite familiar with the Soviet regime’s vulnerable spots and they understood Soviet Jews better. In their opinion, Israel’s open support was capable of inspiring the Jewish masses to join the struggle—and this was precisely what the Soviet authorities truly feared.

Partially under the influence of the new arrivals, some groups of activists in Israel and the West were no longer willing to go along with what they considered the establishment’s passive policy.

As long as Nativ retained a monopoly on receiving and disseminating information worldwide about the situation of Soviet Jewry, it was able to keep a lid on the situation. With the aliya activists’ arrival in Israel, however, cracks began to appear in Nativ’s monopoly. The sad irony was that, through its many years of efforts, Nativ had aroused such a fusion of energy and passion that it was unable to control it under democratic conditions. Passionate groups that were independent of the establishment and partly in opposition to it acquired their own sources of reliable information from the new arrivals.

Somehow I met in Afula with Anatolii Gerenrot, the founder of the Zionist organization in Kiev, recalls Moshe Palkhan.[7] Gerenrot introduced me to a circle of rich Jews from Tel Aviv who independently, circumventing official organs, tried to help Soviet Jews. Ann and Yisrael Shenkar were in this group. Later they organized the “Action Committee” for help to Soviet Jewry and began to publish a journal. They enabled us to make phone calls to the Soviet Union and send packages there. Leah Slovina, Yasha Kazakov, and other activists played an important role in the committee’s work. There were also Israelis there; I remember the journalist Sara Frenkel.

 

Yisrael Shenkar, recalls Vitalii Svechinskii,[8] had enormous cupboards with a colossal archive. He had data on all the refuseniks. Nehemiah received him but he couldn’t implement Shenkar’s proposals; after all, he had to follow the establishment line.

Shenkar did all this at his own risk?

He did it not only at his own risk but also with his own money…. He sent samizdat to Russia and, most importantly, he disseminated data on Russia in the West. He made friends with the leading Western correspondents. Shenkar did an enormous amount.

Did you work with Yisrael Shenkar? I asked Leah Slovina.[9]

Yes, together we organized this activity.

When did this occur?

Back in 1969. We initiated phone calls to Russia, translated transcripts of conversations into Hebrew, and Ann Shenkar translated them into English and disseminated them as letters to dozens of addresses. Then she put together an information bulletin and sent it to Jewish organizations around the world. Yisrael’s nephew, Emmanuel Shenkar, who arrived from Russia in 1969, also participated actively. We had very close relations with the English movement “The 35s” and with the students’ organization in America. In addition, Shenkar had influential friends who subsidized our trips abroad. There we made contacts with Jewish organizations, and with their help we gave interviews on television, radio, and in the newspapers.

The Bureau was probably boiling mad.

We never, incidentally, asserted that we were doing this to spite the establishment. We said that we were doing this because the establishment was not. If the state would start to deal with this, then there would be no need for our activity and we would halt it. That indeed is what happened. When our bulletin became so popular that it was being cited in the press in Europe and America, when it was no longer possible to leave all this in our hands, the Bureau established an open organization called the Public Council for Soviet Jewry. When that organization began to publish a bulletin, we closed ours down.

How long did your activity continue, Leah?

Several years.

Who took an active part in the work of the Action Committee?

Emmanuel Shenkar, I, Moshe Palkhan, and others worked with us. I and several other activists—Kazakov and Shperling—were also connected to Geula Cohen and Yitzhak Shamir.

Did you deal with books?

Yes. We sent packages to the Soviet Union via various people who had passports of other countries [i.e., other than Israel? Yes or they had double ]. Israel Shenkar financed the Committee’s activity from his own pocket. In addition, he had a friend, Yosef Mirelman, a dedicated Zionist like himself, who financed the activists’ work that Nativ didn’t support.

 

We received information, recalls Louis Rosenblum,[10] from two sources: from news accounts, which were fairly sparse, and from contacts in Israel who were in touch with Jews in the Soviet Union and with newly arrived Soviet Jews. We plugged into this unofficial network of information. News and specific reports about individuals were passed on to us by an Israeli woman by the name of Ann Shenkar who assembled the information… She was the main source for most of it. And the information was highly specific on what was happening at any given time with those who were under threat, either of losing their jobs, or of being brought up on charges that might lead to long years in a prison camp.

I met this amazing couple, the Shenkars, in Givataim in the course of searching for documents for this book. Yisrael Palkhan, who, like his older brother Moshe, had been a noted Hebrew teacher in Moscow, advised me to look at their archive. I found a real treasure there: brochures, photographs, letters, hundreds of files… dozens of large cellophane packages were to be found in a covered porch of their private home. I visited them together with Enid Wurtman, an activist of the Soviet Jewry struggle who helped me carry out my research. The elderly pair welcomed us hospitably. Our work in this archive took many months.

Ann Strauss Shenkar was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1923 into a well-to-do Jewish family. Her father was a surgeon and her grandfather owned department stores in Cleveland and New York. Her mother was the president of the Cleveland chapter of the Hadassah Women’s Organization. The family came to the U.S. from Germany.

What brought you to Israel? I asked Ann.[11]

I came to work in Hadassah. That was in May 1946. I worked as a secretary for Hadassah director. During the war she worked on the American navy as a cartographer, explained Yisrael Shenkar. Then for a time she worked in the Jewish Agency (Sochnut) In the office of Eliyahu Eilat in Washingron, who was a head of Jewish Agency in America, and from there she arrived in Israel. She joined the Haganah pre-state military organization, was wounded during the siege of Jerusalem, and then worked in the journalists’ organization. Ann felt that the best time of her life was during the blockade of Jerusalem.

You are from a Zionist family, Ann?

My grandfather, answered Ann with a barely perceptible smile, came here to visit me in Israel. He said, “You had enough problems in your life, and you need Israel besides that?”

How did you two meet?

It happened in Washington, replied Yisrael. In 1946 I went there to visit the head of the Jewish Agency, who had been a great friend of my father. I went to meet him and I met Ann.

No doubt it was love at first sight. Now too, his eyes light up at the sight of her.

Yisrael, when did Nativ start to change its attitude toward an open struggle?

Around 1971 when it established the Public Council for Soviet Jewry headed by Ruth Bar-On. It was in response to the pressure of non-establishment organizations. Ruth was a decent person and worked well but she was very naïve.

What did you do?

Former aliya activists worked with us. They began to phone people in Russia. We put together a telephone book for this purpose. We wanted to know what was happening to specific people. Our relative Emmanuel Shenkar, who had spent eight years in a Russian prison, arrived in Israel in 1969. He also joined the group. We didn’t ask permission from Nativ nor did we think it was necessary to do so. I also helped new immigrants find work and was not afraid of spies among the olim.

What did you do, Ann?

We recorded telephone conversations with activists in the Soviet Union, questioned the immigrants, and then translated the material into English, printed it, and disseminated it in various places: Philadelphia, New York, Cleveland, London, etc. It appeared either in the form of informative letters or as a bi-monthly bulletin. We compiled a rather extensive list of addresses for sending our information. (I saw this list; it filled dozens of pages with the addresses of people and organizations in various countries—Yu. K.) We obtained these addresses from people who came to Israel from Europe and America. In addition, we sent the information to the embassies. We also collected the addresses and telephone numbers of certain Soviet bureaucrats and organized phone calls to them from all over the world…. Sometimes we did it in the name of the Red Cross or other international organizations. Moreover, we helped people still in the Soviet Union obtain invitations from Israel.

Yisrael, why did you consider that an open struggle was more effective than quiet diplomacy?

One reason was based on conversations with the new immigrants. I demanded an open discussion on the situation of Soviet Jewry. During World War II those Jews in the West who enjoyed relative freedom committed a grave sin—they did not help save the Jews who fell under the Nazi yoke. We did not have the right to repeat that mistake. The government of Israel trained its citizens to be submissive but we demanded individual freedom. Acceding to the pressure of Henry Kissinger, who considered it necessary to develop relations with Russia in order to influence it more easily, the government objected even to the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. Clearly, it was necessary to cooperate with the Americans but in certain matters, one must follow one’s own course. We categorically supported the amendment and appealed to people to exert pressure on the Israeli government.

Do you think that the government feared the anti-socialist orientation of the olim and their intellectual independence?

And that was stupid of them. I am still upset that in all of Israel there was practically only one such Yisrael Shenkar…. I had a friend, a general, who said to me, “Yisrael, continue to do that, only YOU can….”

Why?

I don’t know. Fear of the establishment…fear. I was not afraid. I am a protégé of the desert; I was born in the sands and always walked in the sun; I was a commander of commandos….

How many years did you operate?

We published the bulletin for two years and sent informative letters for much longer… Everyone who arrived had his/her story and this became common knowledge. The purpose of our bulletin was to force the authorities to react. When they began to do so on their own, our task had been accomplished and further activity was senseless.

 

At that time no one could say with confidence who was right. But today, looking back, we know that the Shenkars’ activity was extremely useful because, operating independently of the establishment and authorities, it created a field of constant pressure on the Soviet leadership. It was not possible to stop this activity by political démarches or behind-the-scenes agreements. The success of the oppositional individuals and organizations impelled the establishment to turn in the direction of a full-scale open struggle and to support it at a suitable level.

Soviet punitive organs had to take this reality into consideration and curtail their appetites. The KGB had to settle for gnashing their teeth more often than biting in order not to damage the Soviet Union’s foreign policy interests.

Yisrael Shenkar’s organization was not the only one in Israel. Ten years before the Action Committee of Yisrael Shenkar, in 1958, an organization named Maoz [Hebrew for stronghold] was founded. For ten years Shabtai-Bezalel Beit Tzvi, one of the founders, directed this organization. In 1968 Golda Elina became the leading spirit of this group.

Maoz activists conducted an open struggle. Their first poster, produced in 1959, declared, “Let my people go.” In 1960 Maoz organized an evening in commemoration of the Jewish writers and poets who had been murdered by the Soviet regime [in August 1952]. Members of the group sent books to the Soviet Union.

In December 1964 the organization produced the first issue of its annual. One of its moves was to call for a boycott of Soviet circus tours (1966). In 1969 Maoz introduced an initiative that was adopted by five thousand synagogues and Jewish communities in Europe and America: at the Passover seder every Jewish family placed an empty chair for the Soviet Jews who were languishing in “slavery under the Red pharaoh” in order not to forget their misfortune.

At a hunger strike of new immigrants to mark the opening day of the Leningrad hijacking trial, Maoz distributed appeals, leaflets, and photographs of the arrested “hijackers.” During the visit of U.S. President Richard Nixon to Moscow (May 1972), Maoz called for a hunger strike in solidarity with Soviet Jews. Golda Elina devoted all her free time to the organization. She allocated part of the funds given to her by her husband, the owner of a small decorations  store, to the organization’s needs. Yulius Margolin, author of a series of articles and literary works took an active part in the work of Maoz. Long before Solzhenitsyn, Margolin, who spent six years in Stalinist labor camps, described them in his famous book Journey to the Country of the Zek [published in Russian in New York in 1952].

From 1970 to1971 anetwork of independent public organizations in the U.S., Canada, England, France, Australia, and other countries expanded significantly and grew stronger. The student organizations initiated by Yakov Birnbaum and Glenn Richter, “Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry” (founded 1964)  operated energetically on university campuses. They successfully compensated for a lack of funds with their youthful enthusiasm and absolute faith in the justice of their cause. In 1970 six independent groups of volunteers in various U.S. cities formed the organization “Union of Councils for Soviet Jews”.

In May 1971, the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry was founded in England. Known as “The 35s,” it arose in reaction to the arrest of Raiza Palatnik, who had been charged with disseminating “malicious slander against the Soviet governmental and social order” and sentenced to two years of imprisonment. The noted philanthropist and activist from London, Cyril Stein, and the Israeli consul in London, Yitzhak Rager (a noted journalist and Nativ employee and later mayor of Beersheva), played an important role in establishing this movement.

I felt that it was the women in the community who had the time to devote to the cause. The students, who up to then were the only active force for Soviet Jewry, were busy with their studies,” recalled Rager. The men in the community had little free time and the Jewish Establishment was very cool about the movement… There were three women who stood out and who appeared to be willing to do something; Joan Dale, Doreen Gainsford and Barbara Oberman…. One day I had a call from my office in Israel about Raiza Palatnik. I sat thinking – how can I bring this issue to the public? I called in the three women and told them – here is a thirty-five year old woman, about your age, who is in trouble in Odessa. If thirty-five of you demonstrate on her behalf the message might come across.[12]

 

One of the participants suggested following the example of South African women ─ dressing in black and conducting a silent demonstration. In May 1971, approximately a month before Raiza’s trial, a group of Jewish housewives dressed in black conducted a hunger strike protest next to the Soviet embassy and handed the ambassador’s wife a petition in the name of all the 35-year-old Jewish women in Great Britain. The press dubbed them “The 35s.” On May 14 the Jewish Chronicle published the first of numerous reports on their activities. In the course of several following weeks, the women in black walked every day through the streets of London to the Soviet ambassador’s residence and delivered successive petitions addressed to his wife. The new movement quickly turned into a powerful force with chapters throughout Great Britain, in continental Europe, and overseas.

Martin Gilbert wrote about them, “I can think of no more impressive group, battlers for truth, openers of the gates, and marvelous people in themselves, drawn together in a common cause.”[13] By no means did they always agree with the establishment or accede to its appeals. Their demonstrations were militant and their discoveries interesting. They had the time and strength to support this activity for decades.

Although principally a female organization, it included, nevertheless, some male participants. One of them, Michael Sherbourne, was engaged in the Soviet Jewry struggle well before the founding of “The 35s”—in 1968. He had a good mastery of Russian and for a quarter century he maintained telephone contacts with the refusenik community. He vigorously penned dozens of articles, pamphlets, and letters for the cause. Independent, impartial, and extremely industrious, all his life he has done what he thought was necessary. An alumni of the training camp Hehalutz in England, at the start of World War II he immigrated with his wife Muriel to Palestine. After working for half a year in a kibbutz, he joined the British army and served in it for the entire world war. During the War of Independence he joined the Israeli army. This was a difficult time and his wife became seriously ill. In 1949 they were forced to return to England. He finished teachers’ courses and studied Russian on a bet with a classmate.[14] This helped him to understand what was happening to the Jews in the Soviet Union, and from 1968 he began to act, first in the framework of an association of former soldiers and then with “The 35s.” He was unstoppable from then on. In 1980 he was the first in England to receive the award of the “All Party Parliamentary Committee for the Release of Soviet Jews” of the English parliament.

Nativ worked actively in England through its representatives who were attached to the embassy. The journalist and writer Emmanuel Litvinov and the National Council for Soviet Jewry also worked with them. However, as Doreen Gainsford, one of the leaders of “The 35s,” said, “We are unconcerned with what people in Britain think about us. Many people in the National Council are too concerned about the image of Anglo Jewry.” Rita Eker, co-chairman of the 35s, commented, “As far as we were concerned there were only two reasons for not taking action ─ if it hurt the refuseniks or if it hurt Israel; otherwise we went ahead.”[15]

The stream of information that bypassed Nativ’s censorship increased daily. Independent organizations in various countries gained confidence and their actions became more effective. The legal instruments used by the Action Committee and Maoz in Israel, the Student Struggle and Union of Councils in the U.S. and “The 35s” in England, Europe, and Canada, and by other groups that arose a little later proved quite successful.

At the end of March 1970, Yakov Kazakov, the future director of Nativ, carried out a notorious hunger strike next to UN headquarters in New York that stimulated an upsurge of media interest. At the same time as Kazakov was conducting the hunger strike in New York, students in Israel held a powerful demonstration across from the Knesset in support of his demands. Nativ categorically objected to Kazakov and Shperling’s trips to the States, was against the hunger strike near the UN, and was against the student demonstration near the Knesset, but it was no longer able to interfere. Moreover, in light of the wave of publicity, on instructions from Golda Meir, the Israeli representative to the UN took a personal interest in Kazakov’s fate. The dam had been breached.

Nativ began to realize more clearly that it could not completely control the process and in trying to do so, it was more and more frequently winding up in awkward and vulnerable situations. In parallel the pressure increased on the Israeli prime minister to halt the behind-the-scenes diplomacy and initiate an open struggle. Naturally, the courageous behavior of the Jewish movement activists who openly challenged the Soviet authorities aroused peoples’ imagination.

The intensified public activity of opposition organizations in Israel and abroad did not lead to a reduction in the emigration; on the contrary, starting in August 1968 the number of emigrants continually increased. This undermined trust in the establishment’s position. In addition, the Knesset began to investigate the letters of the Nativ representative in the U.S. in which he had asserted that Kazakov and Shperling were provocateurs and Jewish organizations should not meet with them.

“The new reality,” wrote Nehemiah Levanon, hastened the decision to establish a public organ in Israel oriented toward the establishment similar to those that we had created in North and South America, Europe, and Australia.”[16] Its founders intended it to limit considerably any harm that could be caused by militant circles. Unable to stop the process of moving to an open struggle that they had considered harmful, Nativ, therefore, decided to take part in and, as much as possible, direct this struggle. In the summer of 1970 the “Public Council for Soviet Jewry” was established. In founding this body the Israeli government and Nativ crossed the Rubicon although, of course, they conducted a much more restrained and solid public campaign than that which opposition organizations might have mounted.

The Public Council was funded entirely from the state budget. Representatives of various parties sat on its board in order to widen its social base and to avoid charges of political partisanship. The first president of the organization was the president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Avraham Harman (Labor party), and the chairman of the board was Knesset deputy Zalman Abramov from the Gahal party. The board also included prominent public figures, industrialists, and financiers.

In view of the high percentage of academics among the refuseniks and aliya activists, under the auspices of the Public Council a Scientists’ Committee was formed headed by the world-renowned physicist and public figure, Yuval Neeman.

With the help of professionals and volunteers, the Public Council in essence did what the opposition public organizations had done previously: it maintained telephone links with refuseniks, published an information bulletin relying also on information from Nativ, disseminated the bulletin around the world, and engaged in organizing public campaigns and protests. The Public Council carried out useful work and operated effectively. As an instrument of the establishment, it naturally had greater possibilities than voluntary organizations.

The creation of the Public Council and the Scientists’ Committee was the most perceptible victory of the opposition organizations—its activity turned the Jewish establishment in the direction of an open struggle against Soviet emigration policy.

The Public Council occupied a very important niche that enabled the establishment to start implementing projects on a higher level. Preparations began for a worldwide conference designed to serve as a forum and instrument for coordinating Jewish organizations around the world (including the opposition ones) involved in the struggle for Soviet Jewry.

Many activists from that time assert, I said to the journalist and Herut party member Sara Frenkel,[17] that the refusal to carry out an open struggle was the result of the Israeli socialist leadership’s desire not to anger the socialist Soviet Union; the Israelis hoped that by virtue of their ideological closeness they could persuade the Soviet regime through quiet diplomacy.

I don’t believe that, replied Sara, and she pondered a minute. They were concerned that it could harm the activists and other Jews in the Soviet Union and damage Nativ’s connections. They didn’t want us to write about the aliya struggle. They preferred that pressure come from the Jews of America, Europe, and Canada. I think that this approach was correct at a certain stage. There was a time for a secret, diplomatic struggle but then the time came for an open one. It was not simple; some people were displeased with this and there were public disputes on the topic. The Herut people favored an open struggle but many did not agree with them. There were articles in the newspapers promoting the various views.

At first Nativ boycotted me and did not give me the refuseniks’ phone numbers. There was one Tzi Netzer there who was responsible for the press and publications—ooh—oof!

I was the first journalist who broke the silence inside Israel. I began to phone refuseniks after the first Leningrad trial; I phoned Volodia Zaretskii, Boria Ainbinder, and Volodia Slepak. Nativ didn’t give me the phone numbers, but I obtained them on my own. I called every day; I hardly slept or ate and spoke and spoke. My material was broadcast on Kol Yisrael in Russian and I myself broadcast it in Hebrew.

Zaretskii was remarkable. He spoke to me in Hebrew and gave me the names of new people. I was able to phone Moscow ulpans during classes and speak directly with the teachers and students. Slepak also gave me information. Zaretskii would say, “Tomorrow I can’t call. Call ‘the old man’—that was the code name for Slepak—everyone will be there.” I would record on tape Slepak’s account in Russian and someone would come and translate it into Hebrew. I spoke Hebrew with Ainbinder. There were people with whom I spoke English or Yiddish. The radio, incidentally, supported my activity.

Sara, this was, after all, the governmental radio!

Yes, but it’s the radio! Insofar as there was a public discussion of this issue and the opponents of  a public campaign gradually began to understand that they had no choice…. Once, already in 1973-4 the boss invited Nehemiah to the radio. Nehemiah presented a survey of the situation and then a conversation ensued with the members of the editorial board. I then spoke out about everything to him—that I share my own information with Nativ, because I know that it will be published abroad whereas people from Nativ boycott me “You make this into a political matter, Nehemiah,” I challenged him, “because my main opponent Netzer is from Avoda [the Labor Party] whereas I am a member of Herut. But unlike you, I never once went to Begin and never told him what you are doing to me.” Conceding defeat, he said, “Correct. From now on my office is open to you. If you need something, come in and you’ll get it.” After that my life changed. It was already clear that the refuseniks’ struggle had become different, much more strident.

 

Nativ expanded rather quickly. In 1972 during President Nixon’s visit to the Soviet Union, it sent a large information team to Europe and America.

When did you arrive in Israel? I asked Il’ia Voitovetskii, a Sverdlovsk activist.

I arrived on December 6, 1971. Sara Frenkel and a Nativ worker, Aryeh Krol, met me at the airport.

Did your public activity end with your arrival?

On the contrary; it intensified. I arrived with a mass of material about the trial of Valerii Kukui, and the campaign on his behalf fell on my shoulders. After the trial was over, I spoke on the radio, wrote articles for the newspapers, worked with Golda Elina, and Ann Shenkar, Abram Shifrin, and Leah Slovina. I was interviewed by practically all Israeli newspapers. A few days after my arrival, I was invited to Nativ for a conversation; after that we maintained constant contact.

Did they restrict you in any way?

No. In August 1972 Volodia Markman was arrested and I had more work.

You are a convivial and noisy person. Your activity didn’t bother Nativ?

I didn’t feel that in any way. During Nixon’s Moscow visit they sent a genuine public relations “landing force” to the West. It’s a whole story. I had been in Israel all of five months. Nativ called me and asked whether I could travel abroad within two days. I said that I didn’t have a passport. I had to ask permission at work and Nativ took care of the rest and in two days we were already in London. Our team consisted of four from Sverdlovsk: Ella Kukui, Boria and Emma Rabinovich, and I. As far as I know, something similar was done in other capitals.

What was your “military goal”?

We were told that in Moscow Nixon would speak about the situation of the Jews. The Soviets, naturally, would dig in their heels, deny. And here we…

What do  you mean—you?

We? (laughs). The “landing force.” For three days we conducted a hunger strike near the Aeroflot Agency under the portraits of Prisoners of Zion, we gave nonstop interviews, we were photographed by all the television channels, and were approached by various public figures and parliamentary deputies.  We spoke and spoke and spoke…on an empty stomach. We practically did not sleep. We put the sleeping bags that they brought us underneath us so that our rear ends didn’t freeze. We collected signatures under the appeal, “Let my people go.” One passer-by read it and said, “True, but I’m not a Jew. I’m an Arab.” I said to him, “So what! Aren’t you willing to sign a protest against Soviet cruelties?” And he signed! After the hunger strike the organizations grabbed us and dragged us to meetings. They really put us through the wringer. After London I flew with Ella to Rome and the Rabinoviches flew to Paris. In Rome there was no hunger strike; we ate our full at night. There was no time for food during the day—we attended meetings and press conferences—three to four times a day. We raised a worldwide hullabaloo. Moscow sent out their “troops” headed by General Dragunskii; Aron Vergelis [editor of the Yiddish journal Sovetish Heymland] and Elvira Bystritskaia sang to his tune.

And Nativ was standing behind these open noisy protests?

And standing and sitting and lying down.

The activists of the Zionist movement in the Soviet Union switched to an open protest against the regime’s emigration policy in 1969, and they expected their supporters in the West to do the same. Around 1970 the conditions for this were suitable: the opposition organization grew quantitatively and qualitatively; the potential for détente grew internationally; the Soviet Union acceded to pressure from the West and did not react to the open protest with massive repressions. The Leningrad hijacking trial was a watershed after which the establishment joined the open struggle.