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* The Jewish Advocate: Russian Jewish Community Foundation Honors Hero Refusniks
| Tribute spotlights foiled hijacking Plotters hailed for aiding Soviet Jewry By Elise Kigner Advocate Staff They called it "Operation Wedding." Saying they were bound for a wedding, a group of 10 Jews and two Christians chartered a small plane in Leningrad. The year was 1970, and the Soviet Union was still very much alive. Right before takeoff, the group planned to push the two pilots out and fly the plane to Sweden. Wolf Zalmanson joined the plot after his younger brother and sister had signed up. "I decided that it was my duty to join them," said Zalmanson, then 30. "I couldn't stand aside and watch them risk their lives." The 12 didn't even make it out of the airport. They were rounded up by police, beaten up and packed off to prison. Tried on charges of high treason, 10 were sentenced to hard labor and two to death. The arrests and trials triggered international protests and galvanized the movement to free Soviet Jewry. Zalmanson, who now lives in Herzliya, Israel, and two others from the group, recalled the drama at a private reception in Needham. They were among the recipients of the Soviet Jewry Freedom Award from the Russian Jewish Community Foundation at its annual charity ball Sunday. Zalmanson said the other Jews were trying to escape a country that had shuttered many of its synagogues and forbidden the teaching of Hebrew. Jews had to carry passports identifying their religion. Obtaining permission to leave the country was nearly impossible. Those whose applications were refused wound up losing their jobs and coming under KGB scrutiny. They became known as refuseniks. Zalmanson spent nine years in Soviet labor camps before he was set free and allowed to emigrate to Israel. The two death sentences were commuted, but some of the plotters served up to 15 years. They reject the label attempted hijackers, calling themselves samoletchiks (Russian for people of the plane) instead. In explaining why he joined the plot, Anatoly Altman said, "You always had the feeling that you were a second class citizen. That Jews are traitors, Jews are parasites." Israel's triumph in the 1967 Six Day War led to the "reawakening" of the Jews in the Soviet Union, said Altman, a 68-year-old retiree who lives in Israel. Altman said his role in the plot was to help carry the pilots off the plane. He said the group never intended to hurt anyone. Asked if the nine years he spent in a Soviet labor camp left him regretting his involvement in the hijack attempt, Altman just laughed. Boris Penson said his "dream was to escape" when he was in his early 20s living in Latvia. After being denied an exit visa, he turned to more desperate measures. "When I joined the group, I knew it was dangerous," said Penson, 63, an artist who lives with his wife and children in Netanya, Israel. "I didn't see myself living in Russia. This was my chance to be free." Instead, he spent nine years at a labor camp. Greg Margolin, cofounder of the Russian Jewish Community Foundation, served as translator at the Needham gathering. A refusenik himself, Margolin considers the samoletchiks to be heroes. "People should be grateful for people who sacrificed their lives for them," said Margolin, 51, of Brighton, who came to America in 1986. At the time of the hijack attempt, when he was 13, he recalls thinking the plotters were crazy. More than 400 people looked on at Lombardo's in Randolph as four samoletchiks were honored at the Russian foundation's fifth annual charity ball. The Brookline based nonprofit gives grants to local organizations like the Shaloh House Jewish Day School and Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly and runs camps for Russian children in Sderot, Israel. Also honored at the ball were two former Colorado state lawmakers, Jerry Kopel and Tilman Bishop, who in 1979 established the Committee to Free the Leningrad Three, which pressed Soviets officials to release the last of the plotters. Anna Kamenetsky, a 19-year-old student at UMass Amherst, has served as a counselor at the foundation's camps in Israel. A native of St. Petersburg who emigrated to the United States as a baby, Kamenetsky said she first learned about the attempted hijacking when she was chosen to introduce the samoletchiks at the awards ceremony. She researched the plot by watching the 2008 documentary "Refusenik," which features the honorees, and by talking with her family. She discovered that her grandmother, Ella Reznikov of Needham, had worked at the same place as one of the people involved with planning the hijack attempt. She witnessed the KGB dragging him away from his job. Kamenetsky said she was surprised her grandmother never told her about the samoletchiks. "If it weren't for them," she said, "I wouldn't be here today, and I wouldn't know what it means to be Jewish and free." This article was published with the permission of the Jewish Advocate. We strongly encourage you to subscribe and support The Jewish Advocate, our local Jewish community newspaper. which provides broad coverage of the community in general and of Jews from Russia in particular. If you sign up online by the end of October (www.TheJewishAdvocate.com), you will receive a 10% discount off a 2-year or 3-year print subscription - just mention the discount in the comments section. |
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