Soviet Jewry's 'Refusenik' woman, Ida Nudel

• Author: JANE BIRAN
• Published date: 13 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

There came a time during the campaign when it was felt that certain of us should go to Moscow to meet our refuseniks. So it was that in 1977 I went as a tourist with my friend, Zelda Harris, a dedicated campaigner, whose refusenik was Volodya Prestin, loaded with items we knew were in short supply in the Soviet Union, to meet those we knew only through the grapevine. Most of what we did while we were there, we did together, but I went to Ida's small apartment on my own if you don't count the two guys who followed me, identified later by Ida as KGB as if it were obvious.

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At this point, Ida's application for an exit visa to join her sister and family in Israel had been refused year by year. She had been dismissed from her work as a food analyst at the Moscow Microbiological Institute and she had made it her business to maintain and support Jews who had been imprisoned for their activities on behalf of the release of Soviet Jewry. With the help of fellow Jews and foreign visitors, she procured reading material, medicines, and foodstuffs for the Prisoners of Zion and took it to them whenever she could. I was aware of how precarious her position was and this meeting, apart from the personal pleasure for me, was to bring gifts and to show support and concern from Jews around the world for her and her situation. She brushed it all aside. What she was doing, she implied, was what anybody would do. For her, it was a duty, and for the moment, what bothered her most was my well-being. She had prepared for me a dinner of roast chicken which, I later learned was a luxury she could ill aff

ord and must have cost her a month's rations.

I was amazed that this small, dark Russian woman, emitting energy and strength was able to communicate with me in English, heavily accented and basic but completely comprehensible. It was only one of many extraordinary things about her. She wanted to know about the campaign and who else I was meeting, [one of them was the mother of Anatoly, later Natan Sharansky, but that's another story] and about the tourist program and whether there would be another opportunity for us to meet, [there was, with other refuseniks in Red Square and outside the synagogue]. Above all, she wanted to hear about my family, especially the children. She showed me around her flat and there I found further evidence of her dedication to her mission. Pinned behind her bathroom door was a list of ten words in English with what I assumed was the Russian...