What was the Soviet Jewish exodus like? One woman's story told in new book

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

The Leningrad hijackers must have known that the plan was doomed, says Pamela Braun Cohen, author of Hidden Heroes and ex-president of the grassroots organization the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ), who was galvanized by the events of that day. At the inevitable trial that followed their arrest, Soviet judges meted out harsh punishments, including two death sentences for Mark Dymshits, a military pilot, and Edouard Kuznetsov, at 30, a seven-year veteran of the gulag. Nine others received long jail terms. But international pressure brought a reduction in the sentences. That was the first victory.

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Yosef Mendelevich from Riga, the youngest conspirator, served 11 years. When Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky was convicted of espionage in 1976 he and Mendelevich shared some time together in Vladmir maximum security prison where today Alex Navalny, Vladamir Putin's most prominent political opponent, is incarcerated.

Sharansky said Mendelevich used to communicate with him by banging the toilet seat down in his cell and then talking through the toilet bowl. Once they found themselves in the exercise yard together apparently due to a guard's mistake and instinctively embraced though they had never met before. They were separated and returned to their cells.

The mistake was not repeated. But by now the Soviet Jewry movement was cruising at a high altitude. Though the KGB did not yet know it Sharansky had taken over the cockpit controls and the destination was Washington.

In 1981 Mendelevich left prison and the USSR which was still under Brezhnev's stolid rule, and was permitted to emigrate. He soon arrived in Washington, a guest of President Reagan and Vice-President Bush snr. alongside Avital Sharansky.

Pamela Braun Cohen had a lot to do with it. Anatoly – she still calls him that – recalled that his jailer once sought to demoralize him by showing him a video of a small demonstration in Washington, she had organized. "You think people care about you in the West? Just look at who is supporting you, students and housewives." And there at the head of the demo was Avital whom he hadn't seen since his imprisonment. He asked the guileless jailer to play the video again and again. Sharansky appointed Pam Cohen "the five-star-general of the army of students and housewives."

"General" Pam sent the intrepid journalist Louis Rapaport, whom she met in Jerusalem, into the front line from where he returned with a brilliant 12-page spread in The Jerusalem Post on...